THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


INITIAL  STUDIES 


IN 


AMERICAN  LETTERS 


BY 


HENRY  A^TBEERS 

PROFESSOR   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE   IN  VALE   UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK    CLEVELAND    CHICAGO 
elljautauqua 


Copyright,  1895,  l899 
BY  FLOOD  AND  VINCENT 


The  Lakeside  Press,  Chicago,  III.,  U.   .9.  A. 
R.  R.  Donnelley  &  Sons  Company 


CONTENTS. 
\ 

-      CHAPTER.  PAGE. 

I.    THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD,  1607-1765 7 


- 


II.    THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD,  1765-1815 42 

f,x     III.  THE  ERA  or  NATIONAL  EXPANSION,  1815-1837.    69 

*0      IV.    THE  CONCORD  WRITERS,  1837-1861 95 

V.    THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS,  1837-1861 125 

VI.    LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES,  1837-1861 156 

VII.  LITERATURE  SINCE  1861  .                                     .  189 


INITIAL  STUDIES  IN  AMERICAN 
LETTERS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  COLONIAL,  PERIOD— 1607-1765. 

THE  writings  of  our  colonial  era  have  a  much  greater 
importance  us  history  than  as  literature.  It  would  be  un- 
fair to  judge  of  the  intellectual  vigor  of  the  English  colo- 
nists in  America  by  the  books  that  they  wrote  ;  those 
"  stern  men  with  empires  in  their  brains  "  had  more  press- 
ing work  to  do  than  the  making  of  books.  The  first  set- 
tlers, indeed,  were  brought  face  to  face  with  strange  and 
exciting  conditions — the  sea,  the  wilderness,  the  Indians, 
the  flora  and  fauna  of  a  new  world, — things  which  seem 
stimulating  to  the  imagination,  and  incidents  and  experi- 
ences which  might  have  lent  themselves  easily  to  poetry 
or  romance.  Of  all  these  they  wrote  back  to  England  re- 
ports which  were  faithful  and  sometimes  vivid,  but  which, 
upon  the  whole,  hardly  rise  into  the  region  of  literature. 
"New  England,"  said  Hawthorne,  "was  then  in  a  state 
incomparably  more  picturesque  than  at  present."  But  to 
a  contemporary  that  old  New  England  of  the  seventeenth 
century  doubtless  seemed  anything  but  picturesque  ;  filled, 
on  the  contrary,  with  grim,  hard,  work-day  realities.  The 
planters  both  of  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  were  deci- 
mated by  sickness  and  starvation,  constantly  threatened 
by  Indian  wars,  and  troubled  by  quarrels  among  them- 
selves and  fears  of  disturbance  from  England.  The 

7 


Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 


wrangles  between  the  royal  governors  and  the  house  of 
burgesses  in  the  Old  Dominion,  and  the  theological  squab- 
bles in  New  England,  which  fill  our  colonial  records,  are 
petty  and  wearisome  to  read  of.  At  least,  they  would  be 
so  did  we  not  bear  in  mind  to  what  imperial  destinies 
these  conflicts  were  slowly  educating  the  little  communi- 
ties which  had  hardly  yet  secured  a  foothold  on  the  edge  of 
the  raw  continent. 

Even  a  century  and  a  half  after  the  Jamestown  and 
Plymouth  settlements,  when  the  American  plantations  had 
grown  strong  and  flourishing,  and  commerce  was  build- 
ing up  large  towns,  and  there  were  wealth  and  generous 
living  and  fine  society,  the  "good  old  colony  days  when 
we  lived  under  the  king  "  had  yielded  little  in  the  way  of 
literature  that  is  of  any  permanent  interest.  There  would 
seem  to  be  something  in  the  relation  of  a  colony  to  the 
mother-country  which  dooms  the  thought  and  art  of  the 
former  to  a  helpless  provincialism.  Canada  and  Australia 
are  great  provinces,  wealthier  and  more  populous  than  the 
thirteen  colonies  at  the  time  of  their  separation  from  Eng- 
land. They  have  cities  whose  inhabitants  number  hun- 
dreds of  thousands,  well-equipped  universities,  libraries, 
cathedrals,  costly  public  buildings,  all  the  outward  appli- 
ances of  an  advanced  civilization  ;  and  yet  what  have 
Canada  and  Australia  contributed  to  British  literature  ? 

American  literature  had  no  infancy.  That  engaging 
naivete  and  that  heroic  rudeness  which  give  a  charm  to 
the  early  popular  tales  and  songs  of  Europe  find,  of  course, 
no  counterpart  on  our  soil.  Instead  of  emerging  from  the 
twilight  of  the  past,  the  first  American  writings  were  pro- 
duced under  the  garish  noon  of  a  modern  and  learned 
age.  Decrepitude  rather  than  youthfulness  is  the  mark  of 
a  colonial  literature.  The  poets,  in  particular,  instead  of 
finding  a  challenge  to  their  imagination. in  the  new  life 


The  Colonial  Period.  9 

about  them,  are  apt  to  go  on  imitating  the  cast-off  literary 
fashions  of  the  mother-country.  America  was  settled  by 
Englishmen  who  were  contemporary  with  the  greatest 
names  in  English  literature.  Jamestown  was  planted  in 
1607,  nine  years  before  Shakespeare's  death,  and  the  hero 
of  that  enterprise,  Captain  John  Smith,  may  not  improba- 
bly have  been  a  personal  acquaintance  of  the  great  drama- 
tist. "  They  have  acted  my  fatal  tragedies  on  the  stage," 
wrote  Smith.  Many  circumstances  in  "The  Tempest" 
were  doubtless  suggested  by  the  wreck  of  the  Sea  Ven- 
ture on  "  the  still  vext  Bermoothes,"  as  described  by 
William  Strachey  in  his  "  True  Repertory  of  the  Wrack 
and  Redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates,"  written  at  James- 
town, and  published  at  London  in  1610.  Shakespeare's 
contemporary,  Michael  Drayton,  the  poet  of  the  "  Polyol- 
bion,"  addressed  a  spirited  valedictory  ode  to  the  three 
shiploads  of  a  brave,  heroic  minds"  who  sailed  from  Lon- 
don in  1606  to  colonize  Virginia,  an  ode  which  ended  with 
the  prophecy  of  a  future  American  literature  : 

"  And  as  there  plenty  grows 
Of  laurel  everywhere — 
Apollo's  sacred  tree — 
You  it  may  see 
A  poet's  brows 
To  crown,  that  may  sing  there." 

Another  English  poet,  Samuel  Daniel,  the  author  of  the 
"  Civil  Wars,"  had  also  prophesied  in  a  similar  strain  : 

"  And  who  in  time  knows  whither  we  may  vent 
The  treasure  of  our  tongue  to  what  strange  shores    .    .    . 

What  worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 
May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours  ?" 

It  needed  but  a  slight  movement  in  the  balances  of  fate, 
and  Walter  Raleigh  might  have  been  reckoned  among  the 
poets  of  America.  He  was  one  of  the  original  promoters  of 
the  Virginia  colony,  and  he  made  voyages  in  person  to 


10  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Newfoundland  and  Guiana.  And  more  unlikely  things 
have  happened  than  that  when  John  Milton  left 
Cambridge  in  1632  he  should  have  been  tempted  to  follow 
Winthrop  and  the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  who 
had  sailed  two  years  before.  Sir  Henry  Vane,  the  younger, 
who  was  afterward  Milton's  friend — 

"Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old  "— 
came  over  in  1635,  and  was  for  a  short  time  governor  of 
Massachusetts.  These  are  idle  speculations,  and  yet,  when 
we  reflect  that  Oliver  Cromwell  was  on  the  point  of  em- 
barking for  America  when  he  was  prevented  by  the  king's 
officers,  we  may,  for  the  nonce,  "  let  our  frail  thoughts 
dally  with  false  surmise,"  and  fancy  by  how  narrow  a 
chance  "  Paradise  Lost "  missed  being  written  in  Boston. 
But,  as  a  rule,  the  members  of  the  literary  guild  are  not 
quick  to  emigrate.  They  like  the  feeling  of  an  old  and 
rich  civilization  about  them,  a  state  of  society  which 
America  has  only  begun  to  reach  during  the  present  cen- 
tury. 

Virginia  and  New  England,  says  Lowell,  were  the  "two 
great  distributing  centers  of  the  English  race."  The  men 
who  colonized  the  country  between  the  capes  of  Vir- 
ginia were  not  drawn,  to  any  large  extent,  from  the  literary 
or  bookish  classes  in  the  old  country.  Many  of  the  first 
settlers  were  gentlemen— too  many,  Captain  Smith  thought, 
for  the  good  of  the  plantation.  Some  among  these  were 
men  of  worth  and  spirit,  "  of  good  means  and  great  parent- 
age." Such  was,  for  example,  George  Percy,  a  younger 
brother  of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  was  one  of 
the  original  adventurers,  and  the  author  of  "A  Discourse 
of  the  Plantation  of  the  Southern  Colony  of  Virginia," 
which  contains  a  graphic  narrative  of  the  fever  and  fam- 
ine summer  of  1607  at  Jamestown.  But  many  of  these 
gentlemen  were  idlers,  "unruly  gallants,  packed  thither 


The  Colonial  Period.  11 

by  their  friends  to  escape  ill  destinies  "  ;  dissipated  younger 
sons,  soldiers  of  fortune,  who  came  over  after  the  gold 
which  was  supposed  to  abound  in  the  new  country,  and 
who  spent  their  time  in  playing  bowls  and  drinking  at  the 
tavern,  as  soon  as  there  was  any  tavern.  With  these  was 
a  sprinkling  of  mechanics  and  farmers,  indented  servants, 
and  the  offscourings  of  the  London  streets,  fruit  of  press- 
gangs  and  jail  deliveries,  sent  over  to  "  work  in  the  plan- 
tations." 

Nor  were  the  conditions  of  life  afterward  in  Virginia 
very  favorable  to  literary  growth.  The  planters  lived  iso- 
lated on  great  estates  which  had  water-fronts  on  the  rivers 
that  flow  into  the  Chesapeake.  There  the  tobacco,  the 
chief  staple  of  the  country,  was  loaded  directly  upon  the 
trading  vessels  that  tied  up  to  the  long,  narrow  wharves  of 
the  plantations.  Surrounded  by  his  slaves,  and  visited 
occasionally  by  a  distant  neighbor,  the  Virginia  country 
gentleman  lived  a  free  and  careless  life.  He  was  fond  of 
fox-hunting,  horse-racing,  and  cock-fighting.  There  were  no 
large  towns,  and  the  planters  met  each  other  mainly  on  oc- 
casion of  a  county  court  or  the  assembling  of  the  burgesses. 
The  courthouse  was  the  nucleus  of  social  and  political  life 
in  Virginia,  as  the  town-meeting  was  in  New  England.  In 
such  a  state  of  society  schools  were  necessarily  few,  and 
popular  education  did  not  exist.  Sir  William  Berkeley, 
who  was  the  royal  governor  of  the  colony  from  1641  to 
1677,  said  in  1670,  "I  thank  God  there  are  no  free  schools 
nor  printing,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have  these  hundred 
years."  In  the  matter  of  printing  this  pious  wish  was 
well-nigh  realized.  The  first  press  set  up  in  the  colony, 
about  1681,  was  soon  suppressed,  and  found  no  successor 
until  the  year  1729.  From  that  date  until  some  ten  years 
before  the  Revolution  one  printing-press  answered  the 
needs  of  Virginia,  and  this  was  under  official  control.  The 


12  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

earliest  newspaper  in  the  colony  was  the  Virginia  Gazette, 
established  in  1736. 

In  the  absence  of  schools  the  higher  education  naturally 
languished.  Some  of  the  planters  were  taught  at  home  by 
tutors,  and  others  went  to  England  and  entered  the  univer- 
sities. But  these  were  few  in  number,  and  there  was  no 
college  in  the  colony  until  more  than  half  a  century  after 
the  foundation  of  Harvard  in  the  younger  province  of 
Massachusetts.  The  college  of  William  and  Mary  was 
established  at  Williamsburg  chiefly  by  the  exertions  of  the 
Rev.  James  Blair,  a  Scotch  divine,  who  was  sent  by  the 
Bishop  of  London  as  "  commissary  "  to  the  church  in  Vir- 
ginia. The  college  received  its  charter  in  1693,  and  held  its 
first  commencement  in  1700.  It  is  perhaps  significant  of 
the  difference  between  the  Puritans  of  New  England  and 
the  so-called  "Cavaliers"  of  Virginia,  that  while  the 
former  founded  and  supported  Harvard  College  in  1636, 
and  Yale  in  1701,  of  their  own  motion  and  at  their  own 
expense,  William  and  Mary  received  its  endowment  from 
the  .crown,  being  provided  for  in  part  by  a  deed  of  lauds 
and  in  part  by  a  tax  of  a  penny  a  pound  on  all  tobacco  ex- 
ported from  the  colony.  In  return  for  this  royal  grant  the 
college  was  to  present  yearly  to  the  king  two  copies  of 
Latin  verse.  It  is  reported  of  the  young  Virginian  gentle- 
men who  resorted  to  the  new  college  that  they  brought 
their  plantation  manners  with  them,  and  were  accustomed 
to  "  keep  race-horses  at  the  college,  and  bet  at  the  billiard 
or  other  gaming-tables."  William  and  Mary  College  did 
a  good  work  for  the  colony,  and  educated  some  of  the  great 
Virginians  of  the  revolutionary  era,  but  it  has  never  been  a 
large  or  flourishing  institution,  and  has  held  no  such  rela- 
tion to  the  intellectual  development  of  its  section  as  Har- 
vard and  Yale  have  held  in  the  colonies  of  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut.  Even  after  the  foundation  of  the  Uni- 


The  Colonial  Period.  13 

versity  of  Virginia,  in  which  Jefferson  took  a  conspicuous 
part,  southern  youths  were  commonly  sent  to  the  North 
for  their  education,  and  at  the  time  of  the  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War  there  was  a  large  contingent  of  southern  students 
in  several  northern  colleges,  notably  in  Princeton  and 
Yale. 

Naturally,  the  first  books  written  in  America  were  de- 
scriptions of  the  country  and  narratives  of  the  vicissitudes 
of  the  infant  settlements,  which  were  sent  home  to  be 
printed  for  the  information  of  the  English  public  and  the 
encouragement  of  further  immigration.  Among  books  of 
this  kind  produced  in  Virginia  the  earliest  and  most  note- 
worthy were  the  writings  of  that  famous  soldier  of  fortune, 
Captain  John  Smith.  The  first  of  these  was  his  "  True 
Relation,"  namely,  "  of  such  occurrences  and  accidents  of 
note  as  hath  happened  in  Virginia  since  the  first  planting 
of  that  colony,"  printed  at  London  in  1608.  Among 
Smith's  other  books  the  most  important  is  perhaps  his 
"  General  History  of  Virginia  "  (London,  1624),  a  compila- 
tion of  various  narratives  by  different  hands,  but  passing 
under  his  name.  Smith  was  a  man  of  a  restless  and  daring 
spirit,  full  of  resource,  impatient  of  contradiction,  and  of  a 
somewhat  vainglorious  nature,  with  an  appetite  for  the 
marvelous  and  a  disposition  to  draw  the  long-bow.  He 
had  seen  service  in  many  parts  of  the  world,  and  his  won- 
derful adventures  lost  nothing  in  the  telling.  It  was 
alleged  against  him  that  the  evidence  of  his  prowess  rested 
almost  entirely  on  his  own  testimony.  His  truthfulness 
in  essentials  has  not,  perhaps,  been  successfully  im- 
pugned, but  his  narratives  have  suffered  by  the  embel- 
lishments with  which  he  has  colored  them  ;  and,  in  partic- 
ular, the  charming  story  of  Pocahontas  saving  his  life  at 
the  risk  of  her  own — the  one  romance  of  early  Virginian 
history — has  passed  into  the  realm  of  legend. 


14  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Captain  Smith's  writings  have  small  literary  value  apart 
from  the  interest  of  the  events  which  they  describe  and  the 
diverting  but  forcible  personality  which  they  unconsciously 
display.  They  are  the  rough-hewn  records  of  a  busy  man 
of  action,  whose  sword  was  mightier  than  his  pen.  As 
Smith  returned  to  England  after  two  years  in  Virginia, 
and  did  not  permanently  cast  in  his  lot  with  the  settle- 
ment of  which  he  had  been  for  a  time  the  leading  spirit, 
he  can  hardly  be  claimed  as  an  American  author.  No 
more  can  Mr.  George  Sandys,  who  came  to  Virginia  in  the 
train  of  Governor  Wyat,  in  1621,  and  completed  his  excel- 
lent metrical  translation  of  Ovid  on  the  banks  of  the 
James,  in  the  midst  of  the  Indian  massacre  of  1622, 
"limned,"  as  he  writes,  "by  that  imperfect  light  which 
was  snatched  from  the  hours  of  night  and  repose,  having 
wars  and  tumults  to  bring  it  to  light  instead  of  the  muses." 
Sandys  went  back  to  England  for  good  probably  as  early  as 
1725,  and  can,  therefore,  no  more  be  reckoned  as  the  first 
American  poet,  on  the  strength  of  his  paraphrase  of  the 
"Metamorphoses,"  than  he  can  be  reckoned  the  earliest 
Yankee  inventor  because  he  "introduced  the  first  water- 
mill  into  America." 

The  literature  of  colonial  Virginia,  and  of  the  southern 
colonies  which  took  their  point  of  departure  from  Virginia, 
is  almost  wholly  of  this  historical  and  descriptive  kind.  A 
great  part  of  it  is  concerned  with  the  internal  affairs  of  the 
province,  such  as  "Bacon's  Rebellion,"  in  1676,  one  of  the 
most  striking  episodes  in  our  ante-revolutionary  annals, 
and  of  which  there  exist  a  number  of  narratives,  some  of 
them  anonymous,  and  only  rescued  from  a  manuscript 
condition  a  hundred  years  after  the  event.  Another  part  is 
concerned  with  the  explorations  of  new  territory.  Such 
were  the  "  Westover  Manuscripts,"  left  by  Colonel  William 
Byrd,  who  was  appointed  in  1729  one  of  the  commission- 


The  Colonial  Period.  15 

ers  to  fix  the  boundary  between  Virginia  and  North  Caro- 
lina, and  gave  an  account  of  the  survey  in  his  "  History  of 
the  Dividing  Line,"  which  was  printed  only  in  1841. 
Colonel  Byrd  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  figures  of  colonial 
Virginia,  and  a  type  of  the  Old  Virginia  gentleman.  He 
had  been  sent  to  England  for  his  education,  where  he  was 
admitted  to  the  bar  of  the  Middle  Temple,  elected  a  Fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society,  and  formed  an  intimate  friendship 
with  Charles  Boyle,  the  Earl  of  Orrery.  He  held  many 
offices  in  the  government  of  the  colony,  and  founded 
the  cities  of  Richmond  and  Petersburg.  His  estates  were 
large,  and  at  Westover — where  he  had  one  of  the  finest 
private  libraries  in  America — he  exercised  a  baronial  hos- 
pitality, blending  the  usual  profusion  of  plantation  life 
with  the  elegance  of  a  traveled  scholar  and  "  picked  man 
of  countries."  Colonel  Byrd  was  rather  an  amateur  in 
literature.  His  "  History  of  the  Dividing  Line  "  is  written 
with  a  jocularity  which  rises  occasionally  into  real  humor, 
and  which  gives  to  the  painful  journey  through  the  wilder- 
ness the  air  of  a  holiday  expedition.  Similar  in  tone  were 
were  his  diaries  of  "A  Progress  to  the  Mines  "  and  "A 
Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden  "  in  North  Carolina. 

The  first  formal  historian  of  Virginia  was  Robert  Bev- 
erly, "a  native  and  inhabitant  of  the  place,"  whose 
"History  of  Virginia "  was  printed  at  London  in  1705. 
Beverly  was  a  rich  planter  and  large  slave-owner,  who, 
being  in  London  in  1703,  was  shown  by  his  bookseller  the 
manuscript  of  a  forthcoming  work,  Oldmixon's  "  British 
Empire  in  America."  Beverly  was  set  upon  writing 
his  history  by  the  inaccuracies  of  this,  and  likewise 
because  the  province  "  has  been  so  misrepresented  to 
the  common  people  of  England  as  to  make  them  believe 
that  the  servants  in  Virginia  are  made  to  draw  in  cart  and 
plow,  and  that  the  country  turns  all  people  black  " — an 


16  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

impression  which  lingers  still  in  parts  of  Europe.  The 
most  original  portions  of  the  book  are  those  in  which  the 
author  puts  down  his  personal  observations  of  the  plants 
and  animals  of  the  New  World  ;  and  particularly  the  ac- 
count of  the  Indians,  to  which  his  third  book  is  devoted, 
and  which  is  accompanied  by  valuable  plates.  Beverly's 
knowledge  of  these  matters  was  evidently  at  first  hand, 
and  his  descriptions  here  are  very  fresh  and  interesting. 
The  more  strictly  historical  part  of  his  work  is  not  free 
from  prejudice  and  inaccuracy.  A  more  critical,  detailed, 
and  impartial,  but  much  less  readable,  work  was  William 
Stith's  "  History  of  the  First  Discovery  and  Settlement  of 
Virginia,"  1747,  which  brought  the  subject  down  only  to 
the  year  1624.  Stith  was  a  clergyman,  and  at  one  time  a 
professor  in  William  and  Mary  College. 

The  Virginians  were  stanch  royalists  and  churchmen. 
The  Church  of  England  was  established  by  law,  and  non- 
conformity was  persecuted  in  various  ways.  Three  mis- 
sionaries were  sent  to  the  colony  in  1642  by  the  Puritans  of 
New  England,  two  from  Braintree,  Massachusetts,  and  one 
from  New  Haven.  They  were  not  suffered  to  preach,  but 
many  resorted  to  them  in  private  houses,  until,  being 
finally  driven  out  by  fines  and  imprisonments,  they  took 
refuge  in  Catholic  Maryland.  The  Virginia  clergy  were 
not,  as  a  body,  very  much  of  a  force  in  education  or  litera- 
ture. Many  of  them,  by  reason  of  the  scattering  and  dis- 
persed condition  of  their  parishes,  lived  as  domestic  chap- 
lains with  the  wealthier  planters  and  partook  of  their  illit- 
eracy and  their  passion  for  gaming  and  hunting.  Few  of 
them  inherited  the  zeal  of  Alexander  Whitaker,  the  "Apostle 
of  Virginia,"  who  came  over  in  1611  to  preach  to  the  colo- 
nists and  convert  the  Indians,  and  who  published  in  further- 
ance of  those  ends  "  Good  News  from  Virginia,"  in  1613, 
three  years  before  his  death  by  drowning  in  the  James  River. 


The  Colonial  Period.  17 

The  conditions  were  much  more  favorable  for  the  produc- 
tion of  a  literature  in  New  England  than  in  the  southern 
colonies.  The  free  and  geuial  existence  of  the  "  Old 
Dominion"  had  no  counterpart  among  the  settlers  of 
Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay,  and  the  Puritans  must 
have  been  rather  unpleasant  people  to  live  with  for  persons 
of  a  different  way  of  thinking.  But  their  intensity  of 
character,  their  respect  for  learning,  and  the  heroic  mood 
which  sustained  them  through  the  hardships  and  dangers 
of  their  great  enterprise  are  amply  reflected  in  their  own 
writings.  If  these  are  not  so  much  literature  as  the  raw 
materials  of  literature,  they  have  at  least  been  fortunate 
in  finding  interpreters  among  their  descendants,  and  no 
modern  Virginian  has  done  for  the  memory  of  the  James- 
town planters  what  Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Longfellow, 
and  others  have  done  in  casting  the  glamour  of  poetry  and 
romance  over  the  lives  of  the  founders  of  New  England. 

Cotton  Mather,  in  his  "  Magnalia,"  quotes  the  following 
passage  from  one  of  those  election  sermons,  delivered  be- 
fore the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  which  formed  for 
many  years  the  great  annual  intellectual  event  of  the 
colony  :  "  The  question  was  often  put  unto  our  predeces- 
sors, What  went  ye  out  into  the  wilderness  to  see  ?  And  the 
answer  to  it  is  not  only  too  excellent  but  too  notorious  to 
be  dissembled.  .  .  .  We  came  hither  because  we  would 
have  our  posterity  settled  under  the  pure  and  full  dispensa- 
tions of  the  Gospel,  defended  by  rulers  that  should  be  of 
ourselves."  The  New  England  colonies  were,  in  fact, 
theocracies.  Their  leaders  were  clergymen,  or  laymen 
whose  zeal  for  the  faith  was  no  whit  inferior  to  that  of  the 
ministers  themselves.  Church  and  state  were  one.  The 
freeman's  oath  was  only  administered  to  church  members, 
and  there  was  no  place  in  the  social  system  for  unbelievers 
or  dissenters.  The  Pilgrim  fathers  regarded  their  trans- 


18  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

plantation  to  the  New  World  as  an  exile,  and  nothing  is 
more  touching  in  their  written  records  than  the  repeated 
expressions  of  love  and  longing  toward  the  old  home 
which  they  had  left,  and  even  toward  that  Church  of 
England  from  which  they  had  sorrowfully  separated  them- 
selves. It  was  not  in  any  light  or  adventurous  spirit  that 
they  faced  the  perils  of  the  sea  and  the  wilderness.  "  This 
howling  wilderness,"  "these  ends  of  the  earth,"  "these 
goings  down  of  the  sun,"  are  some  of  the  epithets  which 
they  constantly  applied  to  the  land  of  their  exile.  Never- 
theless they  had  come  to  stay,  and,  unlike  Smith  and 
Percy  and  Sandys,  the  early  historians  and  writers  of  New 
England  cast  in  their  lots  permanently  with  the  new 
settlements.  A  few,  indeed,  went  back  after  1640— Mather 
says  some  ten  or  twelve  of  the  ministers  of  the  first 
"  classis "  or  immigration  were  among  them — when  the 
victory  of  the  Puritanic  party  in  Parliament  opened  a 
career  for  them  in  England,  and  made  their  presence  there 
seem  in  some  cases  a  duty.  The  celebrated  Hugh  Peters, 
for  example,  who  was  afterward  Oliver  Cromwell's  chap- 
lain, and  was  beheaded  after  the  Restoration,  went  back  in 
1641,  and  in  1647  Nathaniel  Ward,  the  minister  of  Ipswich, 
Massachusetts,  and  author  of  a  quaint  book  against  tolera- 
tion, entitled  "The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,"  written 
in  America  and  published  shortly  after  its  author's  arrival 
in  England.  The  civil  war,  too,  put  a  stop  to  further  emi- 
gration from  England  until  after  the  Restoration  in  1660. 

The  mass  of  the  Puritan  immigration  consisted  of  men 
of  the  middle  class,  artisans  and  husbandmen,  the  most 
useful  members  of  a  new  colony.  But  their  leaders  were 
clergymen  educated  at  the  universities,  and  especially  at 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  the  great  Puritan  college  ; 
their  civil  magistrates  were  also  in  great  part  gentlemen  of 
education  and  substance,  like  the  elder  Winthrop,  who 


The  Colonial  Period.  19 

was  learned  in  law,  and  Theophilus  Eaton,  first  governor 
of  New  Haven,  who  was  a  London  merchant  of  good 
estate.  It  is  computed  that  there  were  in  New  England 
during  the  first  generation  as  many  university  graduates  as 
in  any  community  of  equal  population  in  the  old  country. 
Almost  the  first  care  of  the  settlers  was  to  establish 
schools.  Every  town  of  fifty  families  was  required  by  law 
to  maintain  a  common  school,  and  every  town  of  a  hun- 
dred families  a  grammar  or  Latin  school.  In  1636,  only 
sixteen  years  after  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  on  Plymouth 
Rock,  Harvard  College  was  founded  at  Newtown,  whose 
name  was  thereupon  changed  to  Cambridge,  the  General 
Court  held  at  Boston  on  September  8,  1630,  having  already 
advanced  £400  "by  way  of  essay  towards  the  building  of 
something  to  begin  a  college."  "An  university,"  says 
Mather,  "which  hath  been  to  these  plantations,  for  the 
good  literature  there  cultivated,  sal  Gentium,  .  .  .  and 
a  river  without  the  streams  whereof  these  regions  would 
have  been  mere  unwatered  places  for  the  devil."  By  1701 
Harvard  had  put  forth  a  vigorous  offshoot,  Yale  College,  at 
New  Ha  veil,  the  settlers  of  New  Haven  arid  Connecticut 
plantations  having  increased  sufficiently  to  need  a  college 
at  their  own  doors.  A  printing-press  was  set  up  at  Cam- 
bridge in  1639,  which  was  under  the  oversight  of  the 
university  authorities,  and  afterward  of  licensers  appointed 
by  the  civil  power.  The  press  was  no  more  free  in  Massa- 
chusetts than  in  Virginia,  and  that  "  liberty  of  unlicensed 
printing"  for  which  the  Puritan  Milton  had  pleaded  in  his 
"  Areopagitica,"  in  1644,  was  unknown  in  Puritan  New 
England  until  some  twenty  years  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolutionary  War.  "The  Freeman's  Oath"  and  an 
almanac  were  issued  from  the  Cambridge  press  in  1639,  and 
in  1640  the  first  English  book  printed  in  America,  a 
collection  of  the  psalms  in  meter,  made  by  various  minis- 


20  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ters,  and  known  as  "The  Bay  Psalm  Book."  The  poetry 
of  this  version  was  worse,  if  possible,  than  that  of  Stern- 
hold  and  Hopkins's  famous  rendering;  but  it  is  note- 
worthy that  one  of  the  principal  translators  was  that 
devoted  "Apostle  to  the  Indians,"  the  Rev.  John  Eliot, 
who,  in  1661-63,  translated  the  Bible  into  the  Algonquin 
tongue.  Eliot  hoped  and  toiled  a  lifetime  for  the  con- 
version of  those  "salvages,"  "tawnies,"  "devil-worship- 
ers," for  whom  our  early  writers  have  usually  nothing  but 
bad  words.  They  have  been  destroyed  instead  of  con- 
verted;  but  his  (so  entitled)  "Mamusse  Wunneetupana- 
tamwe  Up-Biblum  God  naneeswe  Nukkone  Testament  kah 
wonk  Wusku  Testament"  —  the  first  Bible  printed  in 
America — remains  a  monument  of  missionary  zeal  and  a 
work  of  great  value  to  students  of  the  Indian  languages. 

A  modern  writer  has  said  that,  to  one  looking  back  on 
the  history  of  old  New  England,  it  seems  as  though  the 
sun  shone  but  dimly  there,  and  the  landscape  was  always 
dark  and  wintry.  Such  is  the  impression  which  one 
carries  away  from  the  perusal  of  books  like  Bradford's 
and  Winthrop's  Journals,  or  Mather's  "Wonders  of  the 
Invisible  World"  —  an  impression  of  gloom,  of  night 
and  cold,  of  mysterious  fears  besieging  the  infant  settle- 
ments scattered  in  a  narrow  fringe  "  between  the  groaning 
forest  and  the  shore."  The  Indian  terror  hung  over  New 
England  for  more  than  half  a  century,  or  until  the  issue 
of  King  Philip's  War,  in  1676,  relieved  the  colonists  of  any 
danger  of  a  general  massacre.  Added  to  this  were  the 
perplexities  caused  by  the  earnest  resolve  of  the  settlers  to 
keep  their  New  England  Eden  free  from  the  intrusion  of 
the  serpent  in  the  shape  of  heretical  sects  in  religion.  The 
puritanism  of  Massachusetts  was  an  orthodox  and  conserv- 
ative puritanism.  The  later  and  more  grotesque  out-crops 
of  the  movement  in  the  old  England  found  no  toleration 


The  Colonial  Period.  21 

in  the  new.  But  these  refugees  for  conscience'  sake  were 
compelled  in  turn  to  persecute  Antinomians,  Separatists, 
Familists,  Libertines,  Anti-pedobaptists,  and  later,  Quakers, 
and  still  later,  Enthusiasts,  who  swarmed  into  their  pre- 
cincts and  troubled  the  churches  with  "  prophesyings  " 
and  novel  opinions.  Some  of  these  were  banished,  others 
were  flogged  or  imprisoned,  and  a  few  were  put  to  death. 
Of  the  exiles  the  most  noteworthy  was  Roger  Williams, 
an  impetuous,  warm-hearted  man,  who  was  so  far  in  ad- 
vance of  his  age  as  to  deny  the  power  of  the  civil  magis- 
trate in  cases  of  conscience,  or  who,  in  other  words,  main- 
tained the  modern  doctrine  of  the  separation  of  church  and 
state.  Williams  was  driven  away  from  the  Massachusetts 
colony — where  he  had  been  minister  of  the  church  at 
Salem — and  with  a  few  followers  fled  into  the  southern 
wilderness  and  settled  at  Providence.  There,  and  in  the 
neighboring  plantation  of  Rhode  Island,  for  which  he  ob- 
tained a  charter,  he  established  his  patriarchal  rule  and 
gave  freedom  of  worship  to  all  comers.  Williams  was  a 
prolific  writer  on  theological  subjects,  the  most  important 
of  his  writings  being,  perhaps,  his  "  Bloody  Tenent  of  Per- 
secution," 1644,  and  a  supplement  to  the  same  called  out  by 
a  reply  to  the  former  work  from  the  pen  of  Mr.  John  Cot- 
ton, minister  of  the  First  Church  at  Boston,  entitled  "  The 
Bloody  Tenent  Washed  and  made  White  in  the  Blood  of 
the  Lamb."  Williams  was  also  a  friend  to  the  Indians, 
whose  lands,  he  thought,  should  not  be  taken  from  them 
without  payment,  and  he  anticipated  Eliot  by  writing,  in 
1643,  a  "Key  into  the  Language  of  America."  Although 
i  at  odds  with  the  theology  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  Williams 
remained  in  correspondence  with  Winthrop  and  others  in 
Boston,  by  whom  he  was  highly  esteemed.  He  visited 
England  in  1643  and  1652,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of 
John  Milton. 


22  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Besides  the  threat  of  an  Indian  war  and  their  anxious 
concern  for  the  purity  of  the  gospel  in  their  churches,  the 
colonists  were  haunted  by  superstitious  forebodings  of  the 
darkest  kind.  It  seemed  to  them  that  Satan,  angered  by 
the  setting  up  of  the  kingdom  of  the  saints  in  America,  had 
' '  come  down  in  great  wrath, ' '  and  was  present  among  them, 
sometimes  even  in  visible  shape,  to  terrify  and  tempt. 
Special  providences  and  unusual  phenomena,  like  earth- 
quakes, mirages,  and  the  northern  lights,  are  gravely  re- 
corded by  Winthrop  and  Mather  and  others  as  portents  of 
supernatural  persecutions.  Thus  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson, 
the  celebrated  leader  of  the  Familists,  having,  according  to 
rumor,  been  delivered  of  a  monstrous  birth,  the  Rev.  John 
Cotton,  in  open  assembly,  at  Boston,  upon  a  lecture  day, 
"thereupon  gathered  that  it  might  signify  her  error  in 
denying  inherent  righteousness."  "There  will  be  an  un- 
usual range  of  the  devil  among  us,"  wrote  Mather,  "  a 
little  before  the  second  coming  of  our  Lord.  The  evening 
wolves  will  be  much  abroad  when  we  are  near  the  evening 
of  the  world."  This  belief  culminated  in  the  horrible 
witchcraft  delusion  at  Salem  in  1692,  that  "  spectral  puppet 
play,"  which,  beginning  with  the  malicious  pranks  of  a 
few  children  who  accused  certain  uncanny  old  women  and 
other  persons  of  mean  condition  and  suspected  lives  of 
having  tormented  them  with  magic,  gradually  drew  into 
its  vortex  victims  of  the  highest  character,  and  resulted  in 
the  judicial  murder  of  over  nineteen  people.  Many  of  the 
possessed  pretended  to  have  been  visited  by  the  apparition 
of  a  little  black  man,  who  urged  them  to  inscribe  their 
names  in  a  red  book  which  he  carried — a  sort  of  muster-roll 
of  those  who  had  forsworn  God's  service  for  the  devil's. 
Others  testified  to  having  been  present  at  meetings  of 
witches  in  the  forest.  It  is  difficult  now  to  read  without 
contempt  the  "evidence"  which  grave  justices  and 


The  Colonial  Period.  23 

learned  divines  considered  sufficient  to  condemn  to  death 
men  and  women  of  unblemished  lives.  It  is  true  that  the 
belief  in  witchcraft  was  general  at  that  time  all  over  the 
civilized  world,  and  that  sporadic  cases  of  witch-burnings 
had  occurred  in  different  parts  of  America  and  Europe. 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in  his  "  Religio  Medici,"  1635,  affirmed 
his  belief  in  witches,  and  pronounced  those  who  doubted  of 
them  "a  sort  of  atheist."  But  the  superstition  came  to  a 
head  in  the  Salem  trials  and  executions,  and  was  the  more 
shocking  from  the  general  high  level  of  intelligence  in  the 
community  in  which  these  were  held.  It  would  be  well  if 
those  who  lament  the  decay  of  "  faith  "  would  remember 
what  things  were  done  in  New  England  in  the  name  of 
faith  less  than  two  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  not  wonder- 
ful that  to  the  Massachusetts  Puritans  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  mysterious  forest  held  no  beautiful  sugges- 
tions ;  to  them  it  was  simply  a  grim  and  hideous  wilder- 
ness, whose  dark  aisles  were  the  ambush  of  prowling  sav- 
ages and  the  rendezvous  of  those  other  "devil-worshipers " 
who  celebrated  there  a  kind  of  vulgar  Walpurgis  night. 

The  most  important  of  original  sources  for  the  history 
of  the  settlement  of  New  England  are  the  Journals  of 
William  Bradford,  first  governor  of  Plymouth,  and  John 
Winthrop,  the  second  governor  of  Massachusetts,  which 
hold  a  place  corresponding  to  the  writings  of  Captain 
John  Smith  in  the  Virginia  colony,  but  are  much  more 
sober  and  trustworthy.  Bradford's  "History  of  Plymouth 
Plantation  "  covers  the  period  from  1620  to  1646.  The  man- 
uscript was  used  by  later  annalists,  but  remained  unpub- 
lished, as  a  whole,  until  1855,  having  been  lost  during  the 
War  of  the  Revolution  and  recovered  long  afterward  in 
England.  Winthrop's  Journal,  or  "History  of  New  Eng- 
land," begun  on  shipboard  in  1630  and  extending  to  1649, 
was  not  published  entire  until  1826.  It  is  of  equal  author- 


24  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ity  with  Bradford's,  and  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  more 
important  of  the  two,  as  the  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
whose  history  it  narrates,  greatly  outwent  Plymouth  in 
wealth  and  population,  though  not  in  priority  of  settle- 
ment. The  interest  of  Winthrop's  Journal  lies  in  the 
events  that  it  records  rather  than  in  any  charm  in  the  his- 
torian's manner  of  recording  them.  His  style  is  prag- 
matic, and  some  of  the  incidents  which  he  gravely  notes 
are  trivial  to  the  modern  mind,  though  instructive  as  to 
our  forefathers'  way  of  thinking.  For  instance,  of  the 
year  1632:  "At  Watertown  there  was  (in  the  view  of  divers 
witnesses)  a  great  combat  between  a  mouse  and  a  snake, 
and  after  a  long  fight  the  mouse  prevailed  and  killed  the 
snake.  The  pastor  of  Boston,  Mr.  Wilson,  a  very  sincere, 
holy  man,  hearing  of  it,  gave  this  interpretation  :  that  the 
snake  was  the  devil,  the  mouse  was  a  poor,  contemptible 
people,  which  God  had  brought  hither,  which  should  over- 
come Satan  here  and  dispossess  him  of  his  kingdom."  The 
reader  of  Winthrop's  Journal  comes  everywhere  upon  hints 
which  the  imagination  has  since  shaped  into  poetry  and 
romance.  The  germs  of  many  of  Longfellow's  "New 
England  Tragedies,"  of  Hawthorne's  "  Maypole  of  Merry- 
mount,"  and  "Endicott's  Bed  Cross,"  and  of  Whittier's 
"John  Underhill  "  and  "  The  Familists'  Hymn  "  are  all  to 
be  found  in  some  dry,  brief  entry  of  the  old  Puritan  diarist. 
"  Robert  Cole,  having  been  oft  punished  for  drunkenness, 
was  now  ordered  to  wear  a  red  D  about  his  neck  for  a 
year,"  to  wit,  the  year  1633,  and  thereby  gave  occasion  to 
the  greatest  American  romance,  "The  Scarlet  Letter." 
The  famous  apparition  of  the  phantom  ship  in  New  Haven 
harbor,  "upon  the  top  of  the  poop  a  man  standing  with 
one  hand  akimbo  under  his  left  side,  and  in  his  right  hand 
a  sword  stretched  out  toward  the  sea,"  was  first  chronicled 
by  Winthrop  under  the  year  1648.  This  meteorological 


The  Colonial  Period.  25 

phenomenon  took  on  the  dimensions  of  a  full-grown  myth 
some  forty  years  later,  as  related,  with  many  embellish- 
ments, by  Rev.  James  Pierpont,  of  New  Haven,  in  a  letter 
to  Cotton  Mather.  Winthrop  put  great  faith  in  special 
providences,  and  among  other  instances  narrates,  not  with- 
out a  certain  grim  satisfaction,  how  "  the  Mary  Hose,  a 
ship  of  Bristol,  of  about  two  hundred  tons,"  lying  before 
Charleston,  was  blown  in  pieces  with  her  own  powder, 
being  twenty-one  barrels,  wherein  the  judgment  of  God 
appeared,  "  for  the  master  and  company  were  many  of 
them  profane  scoffers  at  us  and  at  the  ordinances  of  re- 
ligion here."  Without  any  effort  at  dramatic  portraiture 
or  character  sketching,  Winthrop  managed  in  all  sim- 
plicity, and  by  the  plain  relation  of  facts,  to  leave  a  clear 
impression  of  many  prominent  figures  in  the  first  Massa- 
chusetts immigration.  In  particular  there  gradually  arises 
from  the  entries  in  his  diary  a  very  distinct  and  diverting 
outline  of  Captain  John  Underbill,  celebrated  in  Whit- 
tier's  poem.  He  was  one  of  the  few  professional  soldiers 
who  came  over  with  the  Puritan  fathers,  such  as  John 
Mason,  the  hero  of  the  Pequot  War,  and  Miles  Standish, 
whose  "  Courtship  "  Longfellow  sang.  He  had  seen  service 
in  the  Low  Countries,  and  in  pleading  the  privilege  of  his 
profession  "  he  insisted  much  upon  the  liberty  which  all 
states  do  allow  to  military  officers  for  free  speech,  etc.,  and 
that  himself  had  spoken  sometimes  as  freely  to  Count 
Nassau."  Captain  Underbill  gave  the  colony  no  end  of 
trouble,  both  by  his  scandalous  living  and  his  heresies  in 
religion.  Having  been  seduced  into  Familistical  opinions 
by  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson,  who  was  banished  for  her  be- 
liefs, he  was  had  up  before  the  General  Court  and  ques- 
tioned, among  other  points,  as  to  his  own  report  of  the 
manner  of  his  conversion.  "  He  had  lain  under  a  spirit  of 
bondage  and  a  legal  way  for  years,  and  could  get  no  assur- 


26  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ance,  till,  at  length,  as  he  was  taking  a  pipe  of  tobacco,  the 
Spirit  set  home  an  absolute  promise  of  free  grace  with  such 
assurance  and  joy  as  he  never  since  doubted  of  his  good 
estate,  neither  should  he,  though  he  should  fall  into  sin. 
.  .  .  The  Lord's  day  following  he  made  a  speech  in  the 
assembly,  showing  that  as  the  Lord  was  pleased  to  convert 
Paul  as  he  was  in  persecuting,  etc.,  so  he  might  manifest 
himself  to  him  as  he  was  taking  the  moderate  use  of  the 
creature  called  tobacco."  The  gallant  captain,  being  ban- 
ished the  colony,  betook  himself  to  the  falls  of  the  Piscata- 
quack  (Exeter,  N.  H.),  where  the  Rev.  John  Wheelwright, 
another  adherent  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  had  gathered  a  con- 
gregation. Being  made  governor  of  this  plantation,  Un- 
derbill sent  letters  to  the  Massachusetts  magistrates,  breath- 
ing reproaches  and  imprecations  of  vengeance.  But  mean- 
while it  was  discovered  that  he  had  been  living  in  adul- 
tery at  Boston  with  a  young  woman  whom  he  had  seduced, 
the  wife  of  a  cooper,  and  the  captain  was  forced  to  make 
public  confession,  which  he  did  with  great  unction  and  in 
a  manner  highly  dramatic.  "He  came  in  his  worst  clothes 
(being  accustomed  to  take  great  pride  in  his  bravery  and 
neatness),  without  a  band,  in  a  foul  linen  cap,  and  pulled 
close  to  his  eyes,  and  standing  upon  a  form,  he  did,  with 
many  deep  sighs  and  abundance  of  tears,  lay  open  his 
wicked  course."  There  is  a  lurking  humor  in  the  grave 
Winthrop's  detailed  account  of  Underbill's  doings.  Win- 
throp's  own  personality  comes  out  well  in  his  Journal. 
He  was  a  born  leader  of  men,  a  conditor  imperii,  just, 
moderate,  patient,  wise  ;  and  his  narrative  gives,  upon  the 
whole,  a  favorable  impression  of  the  general  prudence  and 
fair-mindedness  of  the  Massachusetts  settlers  in  their 
dealings  with  one  another,  with  the  Indians,  and  with  the 
neighboring  plantations. 
Considering  our  forefathers'  errand  and  calling  into  this 


The  Colonial  Period.  27 

wilderness,  it  is  not  strange  that  their  chief  literary  staples 
were  sermons  and  tracts  in  controversial  theology.  Multi- 
tudes of  these  were  written  and  published  by  the  divines 
of  the  first  generation,  such  as  John  Cotton,  Thomas  Shep- 
ard,  John  Norton,  Peter  Bulkley,  and  Thomas  Hooker,  the 
founder  of  Hartford,  of  whom  it  was  finely  said  that 
"  when  he  was  doing  his  Master's  business  he  would  put  a 
king  into  his  pocket."  Nor  were  their  successors  in  the 
second  or  the  third  generation  any  less  industrious  and 
prolific.  They  rest  from  their  labors  and  their  works  do 
follow  them.  Their  sermons  and  theological  treatises  are 
not  literature  :  they  are  for  the  most  part  dry,  heavy,  and 
dogmatic,  but  they  exhibit  great  learning,  logical  acute- 
ness,  and  an  earnestness  wThich  sometimes  rises  into  elo- 
quence. The  pulpit  ruled  New  England,  and  the  sermon 
was  the  great  intellectual  engine  of  the  time.  The  serious 
thinking  of  the  Puritans  was  given  almost  exclusively  to 
religion ;  the  other  world  was  all  their  art.  The  daily 
secular  events  of  life,  the  aspects  of  nature,  the  vicissitude 
of  the  seasons,  were  important  enough  to  find  record  in 
print  only  in  so  far  as  they  manifested  God's  dealings  with 
his  people.  So  much  was  the  sermon  depended  upon  to 
furnish  literary  food  that  it  wras  the  general  custom  of 
serious-minded  laymen  to  take  down  the  words  of  the  dis- 
course in  their  note-books.  Franklin,  in  his  "  Autobiog- 
raphy," describes  this  as  the  constant  habit  of  his  grand- 
father, Peter  Folger  ;  and  Mather,  in  his  life  of  the  elder 
AVinthrop,  says  that  "  tho'  he  wrote  not  after  the  preacher, 
yet  such  was  his  attention  and  such  his  retention  in  hear- 
ing, that  he  repeated  unto  his  family  the  sermons  which 
he  had  heard  in  the  congregation."  These  discourses  were 
commonly  of  great  length  ;  twice,  or  sometimes  thrice,  the 
pulpit  hour-glass  was  silently  inverted  while  the  orator 
pursued  his  theme  even  unto  "  fourteen  thly." 


28  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

The  book  which  best  sums  up  the  life  and  thought  of  this 
old  New  England  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  Cotton 
Mather's  "Magnalia  Christi  Americana."  Mather  was  by 
birth  a  member  of  that  clerical  aristocracy  which  devel- 
oped later  into  Dr.  Holmes's  "  Brahmin  caste  of  New 
England."  His  maternal  grandfather  was  John  Cotton. 
His  father  was  Increase  Mather,  the  most  learned  divine  of 
his  generation  in  New  England,  minister  of  the  North 
Church  of  Boston,  president  of  Harvard  College,  and  au- 
thor, inter  alia,  of  that  characteristically  Puritan  book, 
"An  Essay  for  the  Recording  of  Illustrious  Providences." 
Cotton  Mather  himself  was  a  monster  of  erudition  and  a 
prodigy  of  diligence.  He  was  graduated  from  Harvard  at 
fifteen.  He  ordered  his  daily  life  and  conversation  by  a  sys- 
tem of  minute  observances.  He  was  a  book-worm,  whose 
life  was  spent  between  his  library  and  his  pulpit,  and  his 
published  works  number  upward  of  three  hundred  and 
eighty.  Of  these  the  most  important  is  the  "  Magnalia," 
1702,  an  ecclesiastical  history  of  New  England  from  1620  to 
1698,  divided  into  seven  parts :  I.  Antiquities  ;  II.  Lives 
of  the  Governors  ;  III.  Lives  of  Sixty  Famous  Divines ; 
IV.  A  History  of  Harvard  College,  with  biographies 
of  its  eminent  graduates ;  V.  Acts  and  Monuments  of 
the  Faith  ;  VI.  Wonderful  Providences ;  VII.  The  Wars 
of  the  Lord  — that  is,  an  account  of  the  Afflictions 
and  Disturbances  of  the  Churches  and  the  Conflicts 
with  the  Indians.  The  plan  of  the  work  thus  united  that 
of  Fuller's  "Worthies  of  England"  and  "Church  His- 
tory" with  that  of  Wood's  "Athense  Oxonienses"  and 
Fox's  "Book  of  Martyrs." 

Mather's  prose  was  of  the  kind  which  the  English  Com- 
monwealth writers  used.  He  was  younger  by  a  generation 
than  Dryden  ;  but,  as  literary  fashions  are  slower  to  change 
in  a  colony  than  in  the  mother-country,  that  nimble  Eng- 


The  Colonial  Period.  29 

lish  which  Dryden  and  the  Restoration  essayists  intro- 
duced had  not  yet  displaced  in  New  England  the  older 
manner.  Mather  wrote  in  the  full  and  pregnant  style  of 
Taylor,  Milton,  Brown,  Fuller,  and  Burton,  a  style  ponder- 
ous with  learning  and  stiff  with  allusions,  digressions, 
conceits,  anecdotes,  and  quotations  from  the  Greek  and  the 
Latin.  A  page  of  the  "Magnalia"  is  almost  as  richly 
mottled  with  italics  as  one  from  the  "Anatomy  of  Melan- 
choly," and  the  quaintness  which  Mather  caught  from  his 
favorite  Fuller  disports  itself  in  textual  pun  and  marginal 
anagram  and  the  fantastic  sub-titles  of  his  books  and  chap- 
ters. He  speaks  of  Thomas  Hooker  as  having  "  angled 
many  scores  of  souls  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  ana- 
grammatizes  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  surname  into  "  the  non- 
such "  ;  and  having  occasion  to  speak  of  Mr.  Urian  Oakes's 
election  to  the  presidency  of  Harvard  College,  enlarges 
upon  the  circumstance  as  follows : 

"  We  all  know  that  Britain  knew  nothing  more  famous 
than  their  ancient  sect  of  DRUIDS  ;  the  philosophers, 
whose  order,  they  say,  was  instituted  by  one  Samothes, 
which  is  in  English  as  much  as  to  say,  an  heavenly  man. 
The  Celtic  name,  Deru,  for  an  Oak  was  that  'from  whence 
they  received  their  denomination  ;  as  at  this  very  day  the 
Welsh  call  this  tree  Drew,  and  this  order  of  men  Derwyddon. 
But  there  are  no  small  antiquaries  who  derive  this  oaken 
religion  and  philosophy  from  the  Oaks  of  Mamre,  where  the 
Patriarch  Abraham  had  as  well  a  dwelling  as  an  altar. 
That  Oaken-Plain  and  the  eminent  OAK  under  which 
Abraham  lodged  was  extant  in  the  days  of  Constantine,  as 
Isidore,  Jerom,  and  Sozomen  have  assured  us.  Yea,  there 
are  shrewd  probabilities  that  Noah  himself  had  lived  in 
this  very  Oak-plain  before  him  ;  for  this  very  place  was  called 
Ogge,  which  was  the  name  of  Noah,  so  styled  from  the 
Oggyan  (subcineritiis panibus)  sacrifices,  which  he  did  use  to 


30  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

offer  in  this  renowned  Grove.  And  it  was  from  this  ex- 
ample that  the  ancients,  and  particularly  that  the  Druids 
of  the  nations,  chose  oaken  retirements  for  their  studies. 
Eeader,  let  us  now,  upon  another  account,  behold  the  stu- 
dents of  Harvard  College,  as  a  rendezvous  of  happy  Druids, 
under  the  influences  of  so  rare  a  president.  But,  alas  !  our 
'joy  must  be  short-lived,  for  on  July  25,  1681,  the  stroke  of  a 
sudden  death  felled  the  tree, 

"  Qui  tantum  inter  caput  extulit  omnes 
Quantum  lenta  solent  inter  viberna  cypressi. 

Mr.  Oakes  thus  being  transplanted  into  the  better  world  the 
presidentship  was  immediately  tendered  unto  Mr.  Increase 
Mather.11 

This  will  suffice  as  an  example  of  the  bad  taste  and  labo- 
rious pedantry  which  disfigured  Mather's  writing.  In  its 
substance  the  book  is  a  perfect  thesaurus  ;  and  inasmuch  as 
nothing  is  unimportant  in  the  history  of  the  beginnings  of 
such  a  nation  as  this  is  and  is  destined  to  be,  the  "  Mag- 
nalia"  will  always  remain  a  valuable  and  interesting  work. 
Cotton  Mather,  born  in  1663,  was  of  the  second  generation 
of  Americans,  his  grandfather  being  of  the  immigration, 
but  his  father  a  native  of  Dorchester,  Mass.  A  comparison 
of  his  writings,  and  of  the  writings  of  his  contemporaries, 
with  the  works  of  Bradford,  "Winthrop,  Hooker,  and  others 
of  the  original  colonists,  shows  that  the  simple  and  heroic 
faith  of  the  Pilgrims  had  hardened  into  formalism  and 
doctrinal  rigidity.  The  leaders  of  the  Puritan  exodus,  not- 
withstanding their  intolerance  of  errors  in  belief,  were 
comparatively  broad-minded  men.  They  were  sharers  in  a 
great  national  movement,  and  they  came  over  when  their 
cause  was  warm  with  the  glow  of  martyrdom  and  on  the 
eve  of  its  coming  triumph  at  home.  After  the  Restoration, 
in  1660,  the  currents  of  national  feeling  no  longer  circulated 
so  freely  through  this  distant  member  of  the  body  politic, 


The  Colonial  Period.  31 

and.  thought  in  America  became  more  provincial.  The 
English  dissenters,  though  socially  at  a  disadvantage  as 
compared  with  the  Church  of  England,  had  the  great  bene- 
fit of  living  at  the  center  of  national  life,  and  of  feeling 
about  them  the  pressure  of  vast  bodies  of  people  who  did 
not  think  as  they  did.  In  New  England,  for  many  gen- 
erations, the  dominant  sect  had  things  all  its  own  way — a 
condition  of  things  which  is  not  healthy  for  any  sect  or 
party.  Hence  Mather  and  the  divines  of  his  time  appear 
in  their  writings  very  much  like  so  many  Puritan  bishops, 
jealous  of  their  prerogatives,  magnifying  their  apostolate, 
and  careful  to  maintain  their  authority  over  the  laity. 
Mather  had  an  appetite  for  the  marvelous,  and  took  a  lead- 
ing part  in  the  witchcraft  trials,  of  which  he  gave  an  ac- 
count in  his  "Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,"  1693.  To 
the  quaint  pages  of  the  "  Magnalia  "  our  modern  authors 
have  resorted  as  to  a  collection  of  romances  or  fairy  tales. 
Whittier,  for  example,  took  from  thence  the  subject  of  his 
poem  "The  Garrison  of  Cape  Anne";  and  Hawthorne 
embodied  in  "Grandfather's  Chair"  the  most  elaborate  of 
Mather's  biographies.  This  was  the  life  of  Sir  William 
Phipps,  who  from  being  a  poor  shepherd  boy  in  his  native 
province  of  Maine,  rose  to  be  the  royal  governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, and  the  story  of  whose  wonderful  adventures 
in  raising  the  freight  of  a  Spanish  ship,  sunk  on  a  reef 
near  Port  de  la  Plata,  reads  less  like  sober  fact  than  like 
some  ancient  fable,  with  talk  of  the  Spanish  main,  bullion, 
and  plate  and  jewels,  and  "  pieces  of  eight." 

Of  Mather's  generation  was  Samuel  Sewall,  chief-justice 
of  Massachusetts,  a  singularly  gracious  and  venerable  fig- 
ure, who  is  intimately  known  through  his  Diary,  kept  from 
1673  to  1729.  This  has  been  compared  with  the  more 
famous  Diary  of  Samuel  Pepys,  which  it  resembles  in  its 
confidential  character  and  the  completeness  of  its  self-reve- 


32  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

lation,  but  to  which  it  is  as  much  inferior  in  historic  inter- 
est as  "the  petty  province  here "  was  inferior  in  political 
and  social  importance  to  "Britain  far  away."  For  the 
most  part  it  is  a  chronicle  of  small  beer,  the  diarist  jotting 
down  the  minutiae  of  his  domestic  life  and  private  affairs, 
even  to  the  recording  of  such  haps  as  this  :  "  March  23,  I 
had  my  hair  cut  by  G.  Barret."  But  it  also  affords  in- 
structive glimpses  of  public  events,  such  as  King  Philip's 
War,  the  Quaker  troubles,  the  English  Revolution  of  1688, 
etc.  It  bears  about  the  same  relation  to  New  England  his- 
tory at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  as  Bradford's 
and  Winthrop's  Journals  bear  to  that  of  the  first  generation. 
Sewall  was  one  of  the  justices  who  presided  at  the  trial  of 
the  Salem  witches ;  but  for  the  part  which  he  took  in 
that  wretched  affair  he  made  such  atonement  as  was  possi- 
ble, by  open  confession  of  his  mistake  and  his  remorse  in 
the  presence  of  the  church.  Sewall  was  one  of  the  first 
writers  against  African  slavery,  in  his  brief  tract,  "  The 
Selling  of  Joseph,"  printed  at  Boston  in  1700.  His  "Phe- 
nomena Qusedam  Apocalyptica,"  a  mystical  interpretation 
of  prophecies  concerning  the  New  Jerusalem,  which  he 
identifies  with  America,  is  remembered  only  because 
Whittier,  in  his  "  Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall,"  has  para- 
phrased one  poetic  passage  which  shows  a  loving  observa- 
tion of  nature  very  rare  in  our  colonial  writers. 

Of  poetry,  indeed,  or,  in  fact,  of  pure  literature,  in  the 
narrower  sense — that  is,  of  the  imaginative  representation 
of  life — there  was  little  or  none  in  the  colonial  period. 
There  were  no  novels,  no  plays,  no  satires,  and— until  the 
example  of  the  "  Spectator  "  had  begun  to  work  on  this 
side  the  water— no  experiments  even  at  the  lighter  forms 
of  essay-writing,  character  sketches,  and  literary  criticism. 
There  was  verse  of  a  certain  kind,  but  the  most  gener- 
ous stretch  of  the  term  would  hardly  allow  it  to  be  called 


The  Colonial  Period.  33 

poetry.  Many  of  the  early  divines  of  New  England  relieved 
their  pens,  in  the  intervals  of  sermon-writing,  of  epigrams, 
elegies,  eulogistic  verses,  and  similar  grave  trifles  dis- 
tinguished by  the  crabbed  wit  of  the  so-called  "  metaphys- 
ical poets,"  whose  manner  was  in  fashion  when  the  Puritans 
left  England  ;  the  manner  of  Donne  and  Cowley,  and  those 
darlings  of  the  New  English  muse,  the  "Emblems"  of 
Quarles  and  the  "Divine  Week"  of  Du  Bartas,  as  trans- 
lated by  Sylvester.  The  "Magnalia"  contains  a  number 
of  these  things  in  Latin  and  English,  and  is  itself  well  bol- 
stered with  complimentary  introductions  in  meter  by  the 
author's  friends.  For  example  : 

COTTONIUS  MATHERUS. 

ANAGRAM. 

Tuos  Tecum  Ornasti, 

"  While  thus  the  dead  in  thy  rare  pages  rise 
Thine,  with  thyself  tkou  dost  immortalize. 
To  view  the  odds  thy  learned  lives  invite 
'Twixt  Eleutherian  and  Edomite. 
But  all  succeeding  ages  shall  despair 
A  fitting  monument  for  thee  to  rear. 
Thy  own  rich  pen  (peace,  silly  Momus,  peace!) 
Hath  given  them  a  lasting  writ  of  ease." 

The  epitaphs  and  mortuary  verses  were  especially  in- 
genious in  the  matter  of  puns,  anagrams,  and  similar  con- 
ceits. The  death  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Stone,  of  Hartford, 
afforded  an  opportunity  of  this  sort  not  to  be  missed,  and 
his  threnodist  accordingly  celebrated  him  as  a  "whet- 
stone," a  "  loadstone,"  an  "  Ebenezer  " — 

"  A  stone  for  kingly  David's  use  so  fit 
As  would  not  fail  Goliath's  front  to  hit,"  etc. 

The  most  characteristic,  popular,  and  widely  circulated 
poem  of  colonial  New  England  was  Michael  Wiggles- 
worth's  "Day  of  Doom"  (1662),  a  kind  of  doggerel  "In- 
ferno," which  went  through  nine  editions,  and  "  was  the 


34  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

solace,"  says  Lowell,  "  of  every  fireside,  the  flicker  of  the 
pine-knots  by  which  it  was  conned  perhaps  adding  a  live- 
lier relish  to  its  premonitions  of  eternal  combustion." 
Wigglesworth  had  not  the  technical  equipment  of  a  poet. 
His  verse  is  sing-song,  his  language  rude  and  monotonous, 
and  the  lurid  horrors  of  his  material  hell  are  more  likely  to 
move  mirth  than  fear  in  a  modern  reader.  But  there  are 
an  unmistakable  vigor  of  imagination  and  a  sincerity  of 
belief  in  his  gloomy  poem  which  hold  it  far  above  con- 
tempt, and  easily  account  for  its  universal  currency  among 
a  people  like  the  Puritans.  One  stanza  has  been  often 
quoted  for  its  grim  concession  to  unregenerate  infants  of 
"  the  easiest  room  in  hell " — a  limbus  infantum  which  even 
Origen  need  not  have  scrupled  at. 

The  most  authoritative  expounder  of  New  England  Cal- 
vinism was  Jonathan  Edwards  (1703-58),  a  native  of  Con- 
necticut and  a  graduate  of  Yale,  who  was  minister  for 
more  than  twenty  years  over  the  church  in  Northampton, 
Mass.,  afterward  missionary  to  the  Stockbridge  Indians, 
and  at  the  time  of  his  death  had  just  been  inaugurated 
president  of  Princeton  College.  By  virtue  of  his  "Inquiry 
into  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,"  1754,  Edwards  holds  rank 
as  the  subtlest  metaphysician  of  his  age.  This  treatise 
was  composed  to  justify,  on  philosophical  grounds,  the 
Calvinistic  doctrines  of  foreordination  and  election  by 
grace,  though  its  arguments  are  curiously  coincident  with 
those  of  the  scientific  necessitarians,  whose  conclusions  are 
as  far  asunder  from  Edwards's  "  as  from  the  center  thrice 
to  the  utmost  pole."  His  writings  belong  to  theology 
rather  than  to  literature,  but  there  is  an  intensity  and  a 
spiritual  elevation  about  them,  apart  from  the  profundity 
and  acuteness  of  the  thought,  which  lift  them  here  and 
there  into  the  finer  ether  of  purely  emotional  or  imagina- 
tive art.  He  dwelt  rather  upon  the  terrors  than  the  com- 


The  Colonial  Period.  35 

fort  of  the  word,  and  his  chosen  themes  were  the  dogmas 
of  predestination,  original  sin,  total  depravity,  and  eternal 
punishment.  The  titles  of  his  sermons  are  significant : 
"Men  Naturally  God's  Enemies,"  "  AVrath  upon  the 
Wicked  to  the  Uttermost,"  "The  Final  Judgment,"  etc. 
"A  natural  man,"  he  wrote  in  the  first  of  these  discourses, 
"  has  a  heart  like  the  heart  of  a  devil.  .  .  .  The  heart  of  a 
natural  man  is  as  destitute  of  love  to  God  as  a  dead,  stiff, 
cold  corpse  is  of  vital  heat."  Perhaps  the  most  famous  of 
Edwards's  sermons  was  ' '  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry 
God,"  preached  at  Enfield,  Conn.,  July  8,  1741,  "at  a  time 
of  great  awakenings,"  and  upon  the  ominous  text,  Their 
foot  shall  slide  in  due  time.  "  The  God  that  holds  you  over 
the  pit  of  hell,"  runs  an  oft-quoted  passage  from  this  pow- 
erful denunciation  of  the  wrath  to  come,  "  much  as  one 
holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome  insect  over  the  fire,  ab- 
hors you,  and  is  dreadfully  provoked.  .  .  .  You  are  ten 
thousand  times  more  abominable  in  his  eyes  than  the  most 
hateful  venomous  serpent  is  in  ours.  .  .  .  You  hang  by 
a  slender  thread,  with  the  flames  of  divine  wrath  flashing 
about  it.  ...  If  you  cry  to  God  to  pity  you  he  will  be 
so  far  from  pitying  you  in  your  doleful  case  that  he  will 
only  tread  you  under  foot.  .  .  .  He  will  crush  out  your 
blood  and  make  it  fly,  and  it  shall  be  sprinkled  on  his  gar- 
ments so  as  to  stain  all  his  raiment."  But  Edwards  was  a 
rapt  soul,  possessed  with  the  love  as  well  as  the  fear  of  the 
God,  and  there  are  passages  of  sweet  and  exalted  feeling 
in  his  "Treatise  concerning  Religious  Affections,"  1746. 
Such  is  his  portrait  of  Sarah  Pierpont,  "a  young  lady  in 
ISTew  Haven,"  who  afterward  became  his  wife  and  who 
"  will  sometimes  go  about  from  place  to  place  singing 
sweetly,  and  no  one  knows  for  what.  She  loves  to  be 
alone,  walking  in  the  fields  and  groves,  and  seems  to  have 
some  one  invisible  always  conversing  with  her."  Ed- 


36  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

wards's  printed  works  number  thirty-six  titles.  A  com- 
plete edition  of  them  in  ten  volumes  was  published  in  1829 
by  his  great-grandson,  Sereno  Dwight.  The  memoranda 
from  Edwards's  note-books,  quoted  by  his  editor  and  biog- 
rapher, exhibit  a  remarkable  precocity.  Even  as  a  school- 
boy and  a  college  student  he  had  made  deep  guesses  in 
physics  as  well  as  metaphysics,  and,  as  might  have  been 
predicted  of  a  youth  of  his  philosophical  insight  and  ideal 
cast  of  mind,  he  had  early  anticipated  Berkeley  in  denying 
the  existence  of  matter.  In  passing  from  Mather  to  Ed- 
wards we  step  from  the  seventeenth  to  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. There  is  the  same  difference  between  them  in  style 
and  turn  of  thought  as  between  Milton  and  Locke,  or  be- 
tween Fuller  and  Dryden.  The  learned  digressions,  the 
witty  conceits,  the  perpetual  interlarding  of  the  text  with 
scraps  of  Latin,  have  fallen  off,  even  as  the  full-bottomed 
wig  and  the  clerical  gown  and  bands  have  been  laid  aside 
for  the  undistinguishing  dress  of  the  modern  minister. 
In  Edwards's  English  all  is  simple,  precise,  direct,  and 
business-like. 

Benjamin  Franklin  (1706-90),  who  was  strictly  contem- 
porary with  Edwards,  was  a  contrast  to  him  in  every 
respect.  As  Edwards  represents  the  spirituality  and  other 
worldliness  of  puritanism,  Franklin  stands  for  the  worldly 
and  secular  side  of  American  character,  and  he  illustrates 
the  development  of  the  New  England  Englishman  into 
the  modern  Yankee.  Clear  rather  than  subtle,  without 
ideality  or  romance  or  fineness  of  emotion  or  poetic  lift,  in- 
tensely practical  and  utilitarian,  broad-minded,  inventive, 
shrewd,  versatile,  Franklin's  sturdy  figure  became  typical 
of  his  time  and  his  people.  He  was  the  first  and  the  only 
man  of  letters  in  colonial  America  who  acquired  a  cosmo- 
politan fame  and  impressed  his  characteristic  Americanism 
upon  the  mind  of  Europe.  He  was  the  embodiment  of 


The  Colonial  Period.  37 

common  sense  and  of  the  useful  virtues,  with  the  enterprise 
but  without  the  nervousness  of  his  modern  compatriots, 
uniting  the  philosopher's  openness  of  mind  to  the  sagacity 
and  quickness  of  resource  of  the  self-made  business  man. 
He  was  representative  also  of  his  age,  an  age  of  aufkldrung, 
eclaircissement,  or  "clearing  up."  By  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  a  change  had  taken  place  in  American 
society.  Trade  had  increased  between  the  different  col- 
onies ;  Boston,  New  York,  and  Philadelphia  were  consid- 
erable towns  ;  democratic  feeling  was  spreading  ;  over  forty 
newspapers  were  published  in  America  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution  ;  politics  claimed  more  attention  than  for- 
merly, and  theology  less.  With  all  this  intercourse  and 
mutual  reaction  of  the  various  colonies  upon  one  another, 
the  isolated  theocracy  of  New  England  naturally  relaxed 
somewhat  of  its  grip  on  the  minds  of  the  laity.  When 
Franklin  was  a  printer's  apprentice  in  Boston,  setting  type 
on  his  brother's  New  England  Courant,  the  fourth  Amer- 
ican newspaper,  he  got  hold  of  an  odd  volume  of  the 
"Spectator,"  and  formed  his  style  upon  Addison,  whose 
manner  he  afterward  imitated  in  his  "  Busybody  "  papers 
in  the  Philadelphia  Weekly  Mercury.  He  also  read  Locke 
and  the  English  deistical  writers,  Collins  and  Shaftesbury, 
and  became  himself  a  deist  and  free-thinker  ;  and  subse- 
quently when  practicing  his  trade  in  London,  in  1724-26, 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Dr.  Mandeville,  author  of 
the  "  Fable  of  the  Bees,"  at  a  pale-ale  house  in  Cheapside, 
called  "The  Horns,"  where  the  famous  free-thinker  pre- 
sided over  a  club  of  wits  and  boon  companions.  Though 
a  native  of  Boston,  Franklin  is  identified  with  Philadel- 
phia, whither  he  arrived  in  1723,  a  runaway  'prentice  boy, 
"  whose  stock  of  cash  consisted  of  a  Dutch  dollar  and  about 
a  shilling  in  copper."  The  description  in  his  "  Autobiog- 
raphy "  of  his  walking  up  Market  Street  munching  a  loaf 


38  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

of  bread,  and  passing  his  future  wife,  standing  on  her 
father's  doorstep,  has  become  almost  as  familiar  as  the  an- 
ecdote about  Whittington  and  his  cat. 

It  was  in  the  practical  sphere  that  Franklin  was  greatest, 
as  an  originator  and  executor  of  projects  for  the  general 
welfare.  The  list  of  his  public  services  is  almost  endless. 
He  organized  the  Philadelphia  fire  department  and  street- 
cleaning  service,  and  the  colonial  postal  system  which 
grew  into  the  United  States  Post-office  Department.  He 
started  the  Philadelphia  public  library,  the  American  Phil- 
osophical Society,  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  the 
first  American  magazine,  The  General  Magazine  and  His- 
torical Chronicle;  so  that  he  was  almost  singly  the  father 
of  whatever  intellectual  life  the  Pennsylvania  colony  could 
boast.  In  1754,  when  commissioners  from  the  colonies  met 
at  Albany,  Franklin  proposed  a  plan,  which  was  adopted, 
for  the  union  of  all  the  colonies  under  one  government. 
But  all  these  things,  as  well  as  his  mission  to  England 
in  1757,  on  behalf  of  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  in  its  dis- 
pute with  the  proprietaries  ;  his  share  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  signers ;  and 
his  residence  in  France  as  ambassador  of  the  United  Colo- 
nies, belong  to  the  political  history  of  the  country  ;  to  the 
history  of  American  science  belong  his  celebrated  experi- 
ments in  electricity  ;  and  his  benefits  to  mankind  in  both 
of  these  departments  were  aptly  summed  up  in  the  famous 
epigram  of  the  French  statesman  Turgot  : 

"  Eripuit  ccelofulmen,  sceptrumque  tyrannis." 
Franklin's  success  in  Europe  was  such  as  no  American 
had  yet  achieved,  as  few  Americans  since  him  have 
achieved.  Hume  and  Voltaire  were  among  his  acquaint- 
ances and  his  professed  admirers.  In  France  he  was  fairly 
idolized,  and  when  he  died  Mirabeau  announced,  "  The 
genius  which  has  freed  America  and  poured  a  flood  of  light 


TJie  Colonial  Period.  39 

over  Europe  has  returned  to  the  bosom  of  the  Divinity." 
Franklin  was  a  great  man,  but  hardly  a  great  writer, 
though  as  a  writer,  too,  he  had  many  admirable  and  some 
great  qualities.  Among  these  were  the  crystal  clearness 
and  simplicity  of  his  style.  His  more  strictly  literary  per- 
formances, such  as  his  essays  after  the  "  Spectator,"  hardly 
rise  above  mediocrity,  and  are  neither  better  nor  worse  than 
other  imitations  of  Addisou.  But  in  some  of  his  lighter 
bagatelles  there  are  a  homely  wisdom  and  a  charming  play- 
fulness which  have  won  them  enduring  favor.  Such  are 
his  famous  story  of  the  "  Whistle,"  his  "  Dialogue  between 
Franklin  and  the  Gout,"  his  letters  to  Madame  Helvetius, 
and  his  verses  entitled  "Paper."  The  greater  portion  of 
his  writings  consists  of  papers  on  general  politics,  com- 
merce, and  political  economy,  contributions  to  the  public 
questions  of  his  day.  These  are  of  the  nature  of  journalism 
rather  than  of  literature,  and  many  of  them  were  published 
in  his  newspaper,  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette,  the  medium 
through  which  for  many  years  he  most  strongly  influenced 
American  opinion.  The  most  popular  of  his  writings  were 
his  "Autobiography"  and  "Poor  Richard's  Almanac." 
The  former  of  these  was  begun  in,  1771,  resumed  in  1788, 
but  never  completed.  It  has  remained  the  most  widely 
current  book  in  our  colonial  literature.  "  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,"  begun  in  1732  and  continued  for  about  twenty- 
five  years,  had  an  annual  circulation  of  ten  thousand 
copies.  It  was  filled  with  proverbial  sayings  in  prose  and 
verse,  inculcating  the  virtues  of  industry,  honesty,  and 
frugality.*  Some  of  these  were  original  with  Franklin,  oth- 
ers were  selected  from  the  proverbial  wisdom  of  the  ages,  but 
a  new  force  was  given  them  by  pungent  turns  of  expression. 


*"The  Way  to  Wealth,"  "Plan  for  Saving  One  Hundred  Thousand 
Pounds,"  "  Rules  of  Health,"  "  Advice  to  a  Young  Tradesman,"  "  The 
Way  to  Make  Money  Plenty  In  Every  Man's  Pocket,"  etc. 


40  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Poor  Eichard's  saws  were  such  as  these  :  "  Little  strokes 
fell  great  oaks  "  ;  "  Three  removes  are  as  bad  as  a  fire  "  ; 
"Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise  makes  a  man  healthy, 
wealthy,  and  wise";  "Never  leave  that  till  to-morrow 
which  you  can  do  to-day"  ;  "What  maintains  one  vice 
would  bring  up  two  children  "  ;  "It  is  hard  for  an  empty 
bag  to  stand  upright." 

Now  and  then  there  are  truths  of  a  higher  kind  than 
these  in  Franklin,  and  Sainte-Beuve,  the  great  French 
critic,  quotes,  as  an  example  of  his  occasional  finer  moods, 
the  saying,  "Truth  and  sincerity  have  a  certain  distin- 
guishing native  luster  about  them  which  cannot  be  coun- 
terfeited ;  they  are  like  fire  and  flame  that  cannot  be 
painted."  But  the  sage  who  invented  the  Franklin  stove 
had  no  disdain  of  small  utilities  ;  and  in  general  the  last 
word  of  his  philosophy  is  well  expressed  in  a  passage  of 
his  "Autobiography  "  :  "  Human  felicity  is  produced  not 
so  much  by  great  pieces  of  good  fortune,  that  seldom  hap- 
pen, as  by  little  advantages  that  occur  every  day  :  thus,  if 
you  teach  a  poor  young  man  to  shave  himself  and  keep 
his  razor  in  order,  you  may  contribute  more  to  the  happi- 
ness of  his  life  than  in  giving  him  a  thousand  guineas." 

1.  CAPTAIN  JOHN  SMITH  :      "A  True  Relation   of  Vir- 
ginia."   Deane' sedition.     Boston  :  1866. 

2.  COTTON  MATHER:     "Magnalia  Christi  Americana." 
Hartford:  1820. 

3.  SAMUEL  SEWALL  :  "Diary."    Massachusetts  Historical 
Collections,  fifth  series.     Vols.  V.-VII.  Boston  :  1878. 

4.  JONATHAN  EDWARDS  :    "  Eight  Sermons  on  Various 
Occasions."    Vol.  VII.  of  Edwards's  Works.    Edited  by 
Sereno  Dwight.    New  York  :  1829. 

5.  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  :  "Autobiography."  Edited  by 
John  Bigelow.    Philadelphia  :  1869. 


The  Colonial  Period.  41 

6.  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  :     "Essays    and     Bagatelles." 
Vol.  II.   of  Franklin's  Works.     Edited  by  Jared  Sparks. 
Boston  :  1836. 

7.  MOSES  COIT  TYLER  :     "A  History  of  American  Lit- 
erature," 1607-1765.     New  York:  1878. 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD — 1765-1815. 

IT  WILL  be  convenient  to  treat  the  fifty  years  which 
elapsed  between  the  meeting  at  Xew  York,  in  1765,  of  a 
congress  of  delegates  from  nine  colonies  to  protest  against 
the  Stamp  Act,  and  the  close  of  the  second  war  with  Eng- 
land, in  1815,  as,  for  literary  purposes,  a  single  period. 
This  half  century  was  the  formative  era  of  the  American 
nation.  Historically,  it  is  divisible  into  the  years  of  revo- 
lution and  the  years  of  construction.  But  the  men  who 
led  the  movement  for  independence  were  also,  in  great 
part,  the  same  who  guided  in  shaping  the  constitution  of 
the  new  republic,  and  the  intellectual  impress  of  the  whole 
period  is  one  and  the  same.  The  character  of  the  age  was 
as  distinctly  political  as  that  of  the  colonial  era — in  New 
England  at  least — was  theological ;  and  literature  must 
still  continue  to  borrow  its  interest  from  history.  Pure 
literature,  or  what,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  we  call 
belles-lettres,  was  not  born  in  America  until  the  nineteenth 
century  was  well  under  way.  It  is  true  that  the  Revo- 
lution had  its  humor,  its  poetry,  and  even  its  fiction  ;  but 
these  were  strictly  for  the  home  market.  They  hardly 
penetrated  the  consciousness  of  Europe  at  all,  and  are  not 
to  be  compared  with  the  contemporary  work  of  English 
authors  like  Cowper  and  Sheridan  and  Burke.  Their  im- 
portance for  us  to-day  is  rather  antiquarian  than  literary, 
though  the  most  noteworthy  of  them  will  be  mentioned 
in  due  course  in  the  present  chapter.  It  is  also  true  that 

42 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  43 

one  or  two  of  Irving's  early  books  fall  within  the  last 
years  of  the  period  now  under  consideration.  But  literary 
epochs  overlap  one  another  at  the  edges,  and  these  writ- 
ings may  best  be  postponed  to  a  subsequent  chapter. 

Among  the  most  characteristic  products  of  the  intellect- 
ual stir  that  preceded  and  accompanied  the  revolutionary 
movement  were  the  speeches  of  political  orators  like 
Samuel  Adams,  James  Otis,  and  Josiah  Quincy,  in  Mass- 
achusetts, and  Patrick  Henry  in  Virginia.  Oratory  is  the 
art  of  a  free  people,  and  as  in  the  forensic  assemblies  of 
Greece  and  Rome  and  in  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain, 
so  in  the  conventions  and  Congresses  of  revolutionary 
America  it  sprang  up  and  nourished  naturally.  The  age, 
moreover,  was  an  eloquent,  not  to  say  a  rhetorical  age  ; 
and  the  influence  of  Johnson's  orotund  prose,  of  the  de- 
clamatory "Letters  of  Junius,"  and  of  the  speeches  of 
Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan,  and  the  elder  Pitt  is  perceptible  in 
the  debates  of  our  early  Congresses.  The  fame  of  a  great 
orator,  like  that  of  a  great  actor,  is  largely  traditionary. 
The  spoken  word  transferred  to  the  printed  page  loses  the 
glow  which  resided  in  the  man  and  the  moment.  A 
speech  is  good  if  it  attains  its  aim,  if  it  moves  the  hearers 
to  the  end  which  is  sought.  But  the  fact  that  this  end  is 
often  temporary  and  occasional,  rather  than  universal  and 
permanent,  explains  why  so  few  speeches  are  really  litera- 
ture. If  this  is  true,  even  where  the  words  of  an  orator 
are  preserved  exactly  as  they  were  spoken,  it  is  doubly 
true  when  we  have  only  the  testimony  of  contemporaries 
as  to  the  effect  which  the  oration  produced.  The  fiery 
utterances  of  Adams,  Otis,  and  Quincy  were  either  not  re- 
ported at  all  or  very  imperfectly  reported,  so  that  posterity 
can  judge  of  them  only  at  second  hand.  Patrick  Henry 
has  fared  better,  many  of  his  orations  being  preserved  in 
substance,  if  not  in  the  letter,  in  Wirt's  biography.  Of  these 


44  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

the  most  famous  was  the  defiant  speech  iu  the  Convention 
of  Delegates,  March  28,  1775,  throwing  down  the  gauge  of 
battle  to  the  British  ministry.  The  ringing  sentences  of 
this  challenge  are  still  declaimed  by  schoolboys,  and  many 
of  them  remain  as  familiar  as  household  words.  "  I  have 
but  one  lamp  by  which  my  feet  are  guided,  and  that  is  the 
lamp  of  experience.  I  know  of  no  way  of  judging  of 
the  future  but  by  the  past.  .  .  .  Gentlemen  may  cry 
peace,  peace,  but  there  is  no  peace.  ...  Is  life  so  dear, 
or  peace  so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of 
chains  and  slavery?  Forbid  it,  Almighty  God  !  I  know 
not  what  course  others  may  take,  but  as  for  me,  give 
me  liberty,  or  give  me  death  !"  The  eloquence  of  Patrick 
Henry  was  fervid  rather  than  weighty  or  rich.  But  if 
such  specimens  of  the  oratory  of  the  American  patriots  as 
have  come  down  to  us  fail  to  account  for  the  wonderful 
impression  that  their  words  are  said  to  have  produced 
upon  their  fellow-countrymen,  we  should  remember  that 
they  are  at  a  disadvantage  when  read  instead  of  heard. 
The  imagination  should  supply  all  those  accessories  which 
gave  them  vitality  when  first  pronounced — the  living  pres- 
ence and  voice  of  the  speaker ;  the  listening  Senate ;  the 
grave  excitement  of  the  hour  and  of  the  impending  con- 
flict. The  wordiness  and  exaggeration ;  the  highly  latin- 
ized diction  ;  the  rhapsodies  about  freedom  which  hun- 
dreds of  Fourth-of-July  addresses  have  since  turned  into 
platitudes — all  these  coming  hot  from  the  lips  of  men 
whose  actions  in  the  field  confirmed  the  earnestness  of 
their  speech — were  effective  in  the  crisis  and  for  the 
purpose  to  which  they  were  addressed. 

The  press  was  an  agent  in  the  cause  of  liberty  no  less 
potent  than  the  platform,  and  patriots  such  as  Adams,  Otis, 
Quincy,  Warren,  and  Hancock  wrote  constantly,  for  :the 
newspapers,  essays  and  letters  on  the  public  questions  of  the 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  45 

time  signed  "Vindex,"  "Hyperion,"  "Independent," 
"  Brutus,"  "Cassius,"  and  the  like,  and  couched  in  language 
which  to  the  taste  of  to-day  seems  rather  over-rhetorical. 
Among  the  most  important  of  these  political  essays  were 
the  "Circular  Letter  to  each  Colonial  Legislature,"  pub- 
lished by  Adams  and  Otis  in  1768,  Quincy's  "  Observa- 
tions on  the  Boston  Port  Bill,"  1774,  and  Otis's  "Eights 
of  the  British  Colonies,"  a  pamphlet  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty  pages,  printed  in  1764.  !N"o  collection  of  Otis's 
writings  has  ever  been  made.  The  life  of  Quincy,  pub- 
lished by  his  son,  preserves  for  posterity  his  journals  and 
correspondence,  his  newspaper  essays,  and  his  speeches  at 
the  bar,  taken  from  the  Massachusetts  law  reports. 

Among  the  political  literature  which  is  of  perennial  in- 
terest to  the  American  people  are  such  state  documents  as 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  messages,  inaugural  addresses,  and 
other  writings  of  our  early  presidents.  Thomas  Jefferson, 
the  third  president  of  the  United  States,  and  the  father  of 
the  Democratic  party,  was  the  author  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  whose  opening  sentences  have  become  com- 
monplaces in  the  memory  of  all  readers.  One  sentence  in 
particular  has  been  as  a  shibboleth,  or  war-cry,  or  declaration 
of  faith  among  Democrats  of  all  shades  of  opinion  :  "We 
hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident — that  all  men  are  cre- 
ated equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with 
certain  inalienable  rights  ;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness."  Not  so  familiar  to  modern 
readers  is  the  following,  which  an  English  historian  of  our 
literature  calls  "  the  most  eloquent  clause  of  that  great  doc- 
ument," and  "the  most  interesting  suppressed  passage  in 
American  literature."  Jefferson  was  a  southerner,  but 
even  at  that  early  day  the  South  had  grown  sensitive  on 
the  subject  of  slavery,  and  Jefferson's  arraignment  of  King 


46  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

George  for  promoting  the  "  peculiar  institution  "  was  left 
out  from  the  final  draft  of  the  Declaration  in  deference  to 
southern  members. 

"He  has  waged  cruel  war  against  human  nature  itself, 
violating  its  most  sacred  rights  of  life  and  liberty,  in  the 
persons  of  a  distant  people  who  never  offended  him,  cap- 
tivating and  carrying  them  into  slavery  in  another  hemi- 
sphere, or  to  incur  miserable  death  in  their  transportation 
thither.  This  piratical  warfare,  the  opprobrium  of  infidel 
powers,  is  the  warfare  of  the  Christian  king  of  Great 
Britain.  Determined  to  keep  open  a  market  where  men 
should  be  bought  and  sold,  he  has  prostituted  his  negative 
by  suppressing  every  legislative  attempt  to  restrain  this  ex- 
ecrable commerce.  And,  that  this  assemblage  of  horrors 
might  want  no  fact  of  distinguished  dye,  he  is  now  exciting 
those  very  people  to  rise  in  arms  against  us  and  purchase 
that  liberty  of  which  he  deprived  them  by  murdering  the 
people  upon  whom  he  obtruded  them,  and  thus  paying  off 
former  crimes  committed  against  the  liberties  of  one  peo- 
ple by  crimes  which  he  urges  them  to  commit  against  the 
lives  of  another." 

The  tone  of  apology  or  defense  which  Calhoun  and  other 
southern  statesmen  afterward  adopted  on  the  subject  of 
slavery  was  not  taken  by  the  men  of  Jefferson's  generation. 
Another  famous  Virginian,  John  Randolph  of  Roanoke, 
himself  a  slave-holder,  in  his  speech  on  the  militia  bill  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  December  10,  1811,  said  :  "I 
speak  from  facts  when  I  say  that  the  night-bell  never  tolls 
for  fire  in  Richmond  that  the  mother  does  not  hug  her  in- 
fant more  closely  to  her  bosom."  This  was  said  apropos  of 
the  danger  of  a  servile  insurrection  in  the  event  of  a  war 
with  England— a  war  which  actually  broke  out  in  the  year 
following,  but  was  not  attended  with  the  slave-rising  which 
Randolph  predicted.  Randolph  was  a  thoroughgoing 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  47 

"state  rights"  man,  and,  though  opposed  to  slavery  on 
principle,  he  cried  "Hands  off!"  to  any  interference  by 
the  general  government  with  the  domestic  institutions  of 
the  states.  His  speeches  read  better  than  most  of  his  con- 
temporaries'. They  are  interesting  in  their  exhibit  of  a 
bitter  and  eccentric  individuality ;  witty,  incisive,  and  ex- 
pressed in  a  pungent  and  familiar  style  which  contrasts  re- 
freshingly with  the  diplomatic  language  and  glittering 
generalities  of  most  congressional  oratory,  whose  verbiage 
seems  to  keep  its  subject  always  at  arm's-length. 

Another  noteworthy  writing  of  Jefferson's  was  his  In- 
augural Address  of  March  4,  1801,  with  its  program  of 
"  equal  and  exact  justice  to  all  men,  of  whatever  state  or 
persuasion,  religious  or  political ;  peace,  commerce,  and 
honest  friendship  with  all  nations,  entangling  alliances 
with  none ;  the  support  of  the  state  governments  in  all 
their  rights  ;  .  .  .  absolute  acquiescence  in  the  decisions 
of  the  majority  ;  .  .  .  the  supremacy  of  the  civil  over 
the  military  authority ;  economy  in  the  public  expense  ; 
freedom  of  religion,  freedom  of  the  press,  and  freedom  of 
person  under  the  protection  of  the  habeas  corpus,  and  trial 
by  juries  impartially  selected." 

During  his  six  years'  residence  in  France,  as  American 
minister,  Jefferson  had  become  indoctrinated  with  the 
principles  of  French  democracy.  His  main  service  and  that 
of  his  party — the  Democratic,  or,  as  it  was  then  called,  the 
Republican  party — to  the  young  republic  was  in  its  insist- 
ence upon  toleration  of  all  beliefs,  and  upon  the  freedom  of 
the  individual  from  all  forms  of  governmental  restraint. 
Jefferson  has  some  claims  to  rank  as  an  author  in  general 
literature.  Educated  at  William  and  Mary  College  in  the 
old  Virginia  capital,  Williamsburg,  he  became  the  founder 
of  the  University  of  Virginia,  in  which  he  made  special 
provision  for  the  study  of  Anglo-Saxon,  and  in  which  the 


48  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

liberal  scheme  of  instruction  and  discipline  was  conformed, 
in  theory,  at  least,  to  the  "  university  idea."  His  "  Notes 
on  Virginia  "  are  not  without  literary  quality,  and  one  de- 
scription, in  particular,  has  been  often  quoted — the  passage 
of  the  Potomac  through  the  Blue  Ridge— in  which  is  this 
poetically  imaginative  touch  :  "  The  mountain  being  cloven 
asunder,  she  presents  to  your  eye,  through  the  cleft,  a  small 
catch  of  smooth  blue  horizon,  at  an  infinite  distance  in  the 
plain  country,  inviting  you,  as  it  were,  from  the  riot  and 
tumult  roaring  around,  to  pass  through  the  breach  and  par- 
ticipate of  the  calm  below." 

After  the  conclusion  of  peace  with  England,  in  1783, 
political  discussion  centered  about  the  constitution,  which 
in  1788  took  the  place  of  the  looser  Articles  of  Confederation 
adopted  in  1778.  The  constitution  as  finally  ratified  was  a 
compromise  between  two  parties — the  Federalists,  who 
wanted  a  strong  central  government,  and  the  Anti-Feder- 
als (afterward  called  Republicans,  or  Democrats),  who 
wished  to  preserve  state  sovereignty.  The  debates  on  the 
adoption  of  the  constitution,  both  in  the  general  conven- 
tion of  the  states,  which  met  at  Philadelphia  in  1787,  and 
in  the  separate  state  conventions  called  to  ratify  its  action, 
form  a  valuable  body  of  comment  and  illustration  upon  the 
instrument  itself.  One  of  the  most  notable  of  the  speeches  in 
opposition  was  Patrick  Henry's  address  before  the  Virginia 
Convention.  "  That  this  is  a  consolidated  government," 
he  said,  "  is  demonstrably  clear  ;  and  the  danger  of  such  a 
government  is,  to  my  mind,  very  striking."  The  leader  of 
the  Federal  party  was  Alexander  Hamilton,  the  ablest  con- 
structive intellect  among  the  statesmen  of  our  revolution- 
ary era,  of  whom  Talleyrand  said  that  he  "  had  never 
known  his  equal ";  whom  Guizot  classed  with  "the  men 
who  have  best  known  the  vital  principles  and  fundamental 
conditions  of  a  government  worthy  of  its  name  and  mis- 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  49 

sion."  Hamilton's  speech  "  On  the  Expediency  of  Adopt- 
ing the  Federal  Constitution,"  delivered  in  the  Convention 
of  New  York,  June  24,  1788,  was  a  masterly  statement  of 
the  necessity  and  advantages  of  the  Union.  But  the  most 
complete  exposition  of  the  constitutional  philosophy  of  the 
Federal  party  was  the  series  of  eighty-five  papers  entitled 
"The  Federalist,"  printed  during  the  years  1787-88,  and 
mostly  in  the  Independent  Journal  of  New  York,  over  the 
signature  "  Publius."  These  were  the  work  of  Hamilton, 
of  John  Jay,  afterward  chief-justice,  and  of  James  Madi- 
son, afterward  president  of  the  United  States.  The  "  Fed- 
eralist" papers,  though  written  in  a  somewhat  ponderous 
diction,  are  among  the  great  landmarks  of  American  his- 
tory, and  were  in  themselves  a  political  education  to  the 
generation  that  read  them.  Hamilton  was  a  brilliant  and 
versatile  figure,  a  persuasive  orator,  a  forcible  writer,  and 
as  secretary  of  the  treasury  under  Washington  the  fore- 
most of  American  financiers.  He  was  killed  in  a  duel  by 
Aaron  Burr,  at  Weehawken,  in  1804. 

The  Federalists  were  victorious,  and  under  the  provisions 
of  the  new  constitution  George  Washington  was  inaugu- 
rated first  president  of  the  United  States,  on  March  4,  1789. 
Washington's  writings  have  been  collected  by  Jared 
Sparks.  They  consist  of  journals,  letters,  messages,  ad- 
dresses, and  public  documents,  for  the  most  part  plain 
and  business-like  in  manner,  and  without  any  literary 
pretensions.  The  most  elaborate  and  the  best  known  of 
them  is  his  "  Farewell  Address,"  issued  upon  his  retire- 
ment from  the  presidency  in  1796.  In  the  composition 
of  this  he  was  assisted  by  Madison,  Hamilton,  and 
Jay.  It  is  wise  in  substance  and  dignified,  though  some- 
what stilted  in  expression.  The  correspondence  of  John 
Adams,  second  president  of  the  United  States,  and  his 
Diary,  kept  from  1755-85,  should  also  be  mentioned  as 


50  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

important    sources  for  a  full  knowledge  of  this   period. 

In  the  long  life-and-death  struggle  of  Great  Britain 
against  the  French  Republic  and  its  successor,  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  the  Federalist  party  in.  this  country  naturally 
sympathized  with  England,  and  the  Jeffersonian  democ- 
racy with  France.  The  Federalists,  who  distrusted  the 
sweeping  abstractions  of  the  French  Revolution  and  clung 
to  the  conservative  notions  of  a  checked  and  balanced 
freedom,  inherited  from  English  precedent,  were  accused  of 
monarchical  and  aristocratic  leanings.  On  their  side  they 
were  not  slow  to  accuse  their  adversaries  of  French  atheism 
and  French  Jacobinism.  By  a  singular  reversal  of  the  nat- 
ural order  of  things,  the  strength  of  the  Federalist  party 
was  in  New  England,  which  was  socially  democratic, 
while  the  strength  of  the  Jeffersonian  s  was  in  the  South, 
whose  social  structure— owing  to  the  system  of  slavery- 
was  intensely  aristocratic.  The  War  of  1812  with  England 
was  so  unpopular  in  New  England,  by  reason  of  the  injury 
which  it  threatened  to  inflict  on  its  commerce,  that  the 
Hartford  Convention  of  1814  was  more  than  suspected  of  a 
design  to  bring  about  the  secession  of  New  England  from 
the  Union.  A  good  deal  of  oratory  was  called  out  by  the 
debates  on  the  commercial  treaty  with  Great  Britain  nego- 
tiated by  Jay  in  1795,  by  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Law  of 
1798,  and  by  other  pieces  of  Federalist  legislation,  previous 
to  the  downfall  of  that  party  and  the  election  of  Jefferson 
to  the  presidency  in  1800.  The  best  of  the  Federalist  ora- 
tors during  those  years  was  Fisher  Ames,  of  Massachusetts, 
and  the  best  of  his  orations  was,  perhaps,  his  speech  on 
the  British  treaty  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  April 
18,  1796.  The  speech  was,  in  great  measure,  a  protest 
against  American  chauvinism  and  the  violation  of  interna- 
tional obligations.  "It  has  been  said  the  world  ought  to 

rejoice  if  Britain  was  sunk  in  the  sea  ;  if  where  there  are 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  51 

now  men  and  wealth  and  laws  and  liberty  there  was  no 
more  than  a  sand-bank  for  sea-monsters  to  fatten  on  ;  space 
for  the  storms  of  the  ocean  to  mingle  in  conflict.  .  .  . 
What  is  patriotism  ?  Is  it  a  narrow  affection  for  the  spot 
where  a  man  was  born?  Are  the  very  clods  where  we 
tread  entitled  to  this  ardent  preference  because  they  are 
greener  ?  .  .  .  I  see  no  exception  to  the  respect  that  is 
paid  among  nations  to  the  law  of  good  faith.  .  .  .  It  is 
observed  by  barbarians — a  whiff  of  tobacco  smoke  or  a 
string  of  beads  gives  not  merely  binding  force  but  sanctity 
to  treaties.  Even  in  Algiers  a  truce  may  be  bought  for 
money,  but,  when  ratified,  even  Algiers  is  too  wise  or  too 
just  to  disown  and  annul  its  obligation."  Ames  was  a 
scholar,  and  his  speeches  are  more  finished  and  thoughtful, 
more  literary,  in  a  way,  than  those  of  his  contemporaries. 
His  eulogiums  on  Washington  and  Hamilton  are  elaborate 
tributes,  rather  excessive,  perhaps,  in  laudation  and  in 
classical  allusions.  In  all  the  oratory  of  the  revolutionary 
period  there  is  nothing  equal  in  deep  and  condensed  en- 
ergy of  feeling  to  the  single  clause  in  Lincoln's  Gettysburg 
Address,  "  that  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead 
shall  not  have  died  in  vain." 

A  prominent  figure  during  and  after  the  War  of  the  Rev- 
olution was  Thomas  Paine,  or,  as  he  \vas  somewhat  disre- 
spectfully called,  "  Tom  Paine."  He  was  a  dissenting  min- 
ister who,  conceiving  himself  ill-treated  by  the  British 
government,  came  to  Philadelphia  in  1774  and  threw  him- 
self heart  and  soul  into  the  colonial  cause.  His  pamphlet, 
"Common.  Sense,"  issued  in  1776,  began  with  the  famous 
words,  "These  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls."  This 
was  followed  by  "The  Crisis,"  a  series  of  political  essays 
advocating  independence  and  the  establishment  of  a  repub- 
lic, published  in  periodical  form,  though  at  irregular  in- 
tervals. Paine's  rough  and  vigorous  advocacy  was  of  great 


52  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

service  to  the  American  patriots.  His  writings  were  pop- 
ular and  his  arguments  were  of  a  kind  easily  understood 
by  plain  people,  addressing  themselves  to  the  common 
sense,  the  prejudices  and  passions  of  unlettered  readers. 
He  afterward  went  to  France  and  took  an  active  part  in 
the  popular  movement  there,  crossing  swords  with  Burke 
in  his  "  Rights  of  Man,"  1791-92,  written  in  defense  of  the 
French  Revolution.  He  was  one  of  the  two  foreigners 
who  sat  in  the  Convention  ;  but  falling  under  suspicion 
during  the  days  of  the  Terror,  he  was  committed  to  the 
prison  of  the  Luxemburg  and  only  released  upon  the 
fall  of  Robespierre,  July  27,  1794.  While  in  prison  he 
wrote  a  portion  of  his  best-known  work,  "  The  Age  of 
Reason."  This  appeared  in  two  parts  in  1794  and  1795, 
the  manuscript  of  the  first  part  having  been  intrusted  to 
Joel  Barlow,  the  American  poet,  who  happened  to  be  in 
Paris  when  Paine  was  sent  to  prison. 

"The  Age  of  Reason"  damaged  Paine's  reputation  in 
America,  where  the  name  of  "Tom  Paine"  became  a 
stench  in  the  nostrils  of  the  godly,  and  a  synonym  for  athe- 
ism and  blasphemy.  His  book  was  denounced  from  a  hun- 
dred pulpits,  and  copies  of  it  were  carefully  locked  away 
from  the  sight  of  "  the  young,"  whose  religious  beliefs  it 
might  undermine.  It  was,  in  effect,  a  crude  and  popular 
statement  of  the  deistic  argument  against  Christianity. 
What  the  cutting  logic  and  persiflage — the  sourire  hideux — 
of  Voltaire  had  done  in  France,  Paine,  with  coarser  ma- 
terials, essayed  to  do  for  the  English-speaking  populations. 
Deism  was  in  the  air  of  the  time ;  Franklin,  Jefferson, 
Ethan  Allen,  Joel  Barlow,  and  other  prominent  Americans 
were  openly  or  unavowedly  deistic.  Free  thought,  some- 
how, went  along  with  democratic  opinions,  and  was  a  part 
of  the  liberal  movement  of  the  age.  Paine  was  a  man 
without  reverence,  imagination,  or  religious  feeling.  He 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  53 

was  no  scholar,  and  he  was  not  troubled  by  any  perception  of 
the  deeper  and  subtler  aspects  of  the  questions  which  he 
touched.  In  his  examination  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments he  insisted  that  the  Bible  was  an  imposition  and  a 
forgery,  full  of  lies,  absurdities,  and  obscenities.  Super- 
natural Christianity,  with  all  its  mysteries  and  miracles, 
was  a  fraud  practiced  by  priests  upon  the  people,  and 
churches  were  instruments  of  oppression  in  the  hands  of 
tyrants.  This  way  of  accounting  for  Christianity  would 
not  now  be  accepted  by  even  the  most  "advanced  "  think- 
ers. The  contest  between  skepticism,  and  revelation  has 
long  since  shifted  to  other  grounds.  Both  the  philosophy 
and  the  temper  of  "  The  Age  of  Reason  "  belong  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  But  Palne's  downright  pugnacious 
method  of  attack  was  effective  with  shrewd,  half-educated 
doubters  ;  and  in  America  well-thumbed  copies  of  his 
book  passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  many  a  rural  tavern 
or  store,  where  the  village  atheist  wrestled  in  debate  with 
the  deacon  or  the  schoolmaster.  Paine  rested  his  argument 
against  Christianity  upon  the  familiar  grounds  of  the  in- 
credibility of  miracles,  the  falsity  of  prophecy,  the  cruelty 
or  immorality  of  Moses  and  David  and  other  Old  Testa- 
ment worthies,  the  disagreement  of  the  evangelists  in  their 
gospels,  etc.  The  spirit  of  his  book  and  his  competence  as 
a  critic  are  illustrated  by  his  saying  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment :  "Any  person  who  could  tell  a  story  of  an  appari- 
tion, or  of  a  man's  walking,  could  have  made  such  books, 
for  the  story  is  most  wretchedly  told.  The  sum  total  of  a 
parson's  learning  is  a-6,  a&,  and  hie,  hcec,  hoc,  and  this  is 
more  than  sufficient  to  have  enabled  them,  had  they  lived 
at  the  time,  to  have  written  all  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament." 

When  we  turn  from  the  political  and  controversial  writ- 
ings of  the  Revolution  to  such  lighter  literature  as  existed, 


54  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

we  find  little  that  would  deserve  mention  in  a  more 
crowded  period.  The  few  things  in  this  kind  that  have 
kept  afloat  on  the  current  of  time — rari  nantes  in  gurgite 
vasto— attract  attention  rather  by  reason  of  their  fewness 
than  of  any  special  excellence  that  they  have.  During  the 
eighteenth  century  American  literature  continued  to  ac- 
commodate itself  to  changes  of  taste  in  the  old  country. 
The  so-called  classical  or  Augustan  writers  of  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne  replaced  other  models  of  style  ;  "  The  Spec- 
tator "  set  the  fashion  of  almost  all  of  our  lighter  prose, 
from  Franklin's  "  Busybody"  down  to  the  time  of  Irving, 
who  perpetuated  the  Addisonian  tradition  later  than  any 
English  writer.  The  influence  of  Locke,  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
and  of  the  parliamentary  orators  has  already  been  men- 
tioned. In  poetry  the  example  of  Pope  was  dominant,  so 
that  we  find,  for  example,  William  Livingston,  who  be- 
came governor  of  New  Jersey  and  a  member  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress,  writing  in  1747  a  poem  on  "  Philosophic 
Solitude  "  which  reproduces  the  tricks  of  Pope's  antitheses 
and  climaxes  with  the  imagery  of  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock," 
and  the  didactic  morality  of  the  "  Imitations  from  Horace  " 
and  the  "  Moral  Essays  "  : 

"  Let  ardent  heroes  seek  renown  in  arms, 
Pant  after  fame  and  rush  to  war's  alarms  ; 
To  shining  palaces  let  fools  resort, 
And  dunces  cringe  to  be  esteemed  at  court. 
Mine  be  the  pleasure  of  a  rural  life, 
From  noise  remote  and  ignorant  of  strife, 
Far  from  the  painted  belle  and  white-gloved  beau, 
The  lawless  masquerade  and  midnight  show  ; 
From  ladies,  lap-dogs,  courtiers,  garters,  stars, 
Fops,  fiddlers,  tyrants,  emperors,  and  czars." 

The  most  popular  poem  of  the  revolutionary  period  was 
John  Trumbull's"McFingal,"  published  in  part  at  Phila- 
delphia in  1775,  and  in  complete  shape  at  Hartford  in  1782. 
It  went  through  more  than  thirty  editions  in  America,  and 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  55 

was  several  times  reprinted  in  England.  "  McFingal "  was 
a  satire  in  four  cantos,  directed  against  the  American  loyal- 
ists, and  modeled  quite  closely  upon  Butler's  mock  heroic 
poem,  "Hudibras."  As  Butler's  hero  sallies  forth  to  put 
down  May  games  and  bear-baitings,  so  the  Tory  McFingal 
goes  out  against  the  liberty  poles  and  bonfires  of  the  patri- 
ots, but  is  tarred  and  feathered,  and  otherwise  ill-entreated, 
and  finally  takes  refuge  in  the  camp  of  General  Gage  at 
Boston.  The  poem  is  written  with  smartness  and  vivacity, 
attains  often  to  drollery,  and  sometimes  to  genuine  humor. 
It  remains  one  of  the  best  of  American  political  satires, 
and  unquestionably  the  most  successful  of  the  many  imi- 
tations of  "  Hudibras,"  whose  manner  it  follows  so  closely 
that  some  of  its  lines,  which  have  passed  into  currency  as 
proverbs,  are  generally  attributed  to  Butler.  For  example  : 

"  No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law." 

Or  this : 

"  For  any  man  with  half  an  eye 
What  stands  before  him  may  espy ; 
But  optics  sharp  it  needs,  I  ween, 
To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen." 

Trumbull's  wit  did  not  spare  the  vulnerable  points  of  his 
own  countrymen,  as  in  his  sharp  skit  at  slavery  in  the 
couplet  about  the  newly  adopted  flag  of  the  Confederation  : 

"  Inscribed  with  inconsistent  types 
Of  liberty  and  thirteen  stripes." 

Trumbull  was  one  of  a  group  of  Connecticut  literati,  wTho 
made  such  noise  in  their  time  as  "  The  Hartford  Wits." 
The  other  members  of  the  group  were  Lemuel  Hopkins, 
David  Humphreys,  Joel  Barlow,  Elihu  Smith,  Theodore 
Dwight,  and  Richard  Alsop.  Trumbull,  Humphreys,  and 
Barlow  had  formed  a  friendship  and  a  kind  of  literary 
partnership  at  Yale,  where  they  were  contemporaries  of 
each  other  and  of  Timothy  Dwight.  During  the  war  they 


56  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

served  in  the  army  in  various  capacities,  and  at  its  close 
they  found  themselves  again  together  for  a  few  years  at 
Hartford,  where  they  formed  a  club  that  met  weekly  for 
social  and  literary  purposes.  Their  presence  lent  a  sort  of 
eclat  to  the  little  provincial  capital,  and  their  writings 
made  it  for  a  time  an  intellectual  center  quite  as  important 
as  Boston  or  Philadelphia  or  New  York.  The  Hartford 
Wits  were  stanch  Federalists,  and  used  their  pens  freely  in 
support  of  the  administrations  of  Washington  and  Adams, 
and  in  ridicule  of  Jefferson  and  the  Democrats.  In  1786-87 
Trumbull,  Hopkins,  Barlow,  and  Humphreys  published 
in  the  New  Haven  Gazette  a  series  of  satirical  papers  entitled 
"The  Anarchiad,"  suggested  by  the  English  "  Rolliad," 
and  purporting  to  be  extracts  from  an  ancient  epic  on  "  the 
Eestoration  of  Chaos  and  Substantial  Night."  The  papers 
were  an  effort  to  correct,  by  ridicule,  the  anarchic  condi- 
tion of  things  which  preceded  the  adoption  of  the  federal 
constitution  in  1789.  It  was  a  time  of  great  confusion  and 
discontent,  when,  in  parts  of  the  country,  Democratic 
mobs  were  protesting  against  the  vote  of  five  years'  pay  by 
the  Continental  Congress  to  the  officers  of  the  American 
army.  "  The  Anarchiad  "  was  followed  by  "The  Echo" 
and  "  The  Political  Green  House,"  written  mostly  by  Alsop 
and  Theodore  Dwight,  and  similar  in  character  and  tend- 
ency to  the  earlier  series.  Time  has  greatly  blunted  the 
edge  of  these  satires,  but  they  were  influential  in  their  day, 
and  are  an  important  part  of  the  literature  of  the  old  Fed- 
eralist party. 

Humphreys  became  afterward  distinguished  in  the  diplo- 
matic service,  and  was,  successively,  ambassador  to  Portu- 
gal and  to  Spain,  whence  he  introduced  into  America  the 
breed  of  merino  sheep.  He  had  been  on  Washington's 
staff  during  the  war,  and  was  several  times  an  inmate  of 
his  house  at  Mount  Vernon,  where  he  produced,  in  1785, 


The  Revolutionary  Period. 


the  best  known  of  his  writings,  "  Mount  Vernon,"  an  ode 
of  a  rather  mild  description,  which  once  had  admirers. 
Joel  Barlow  cuts  a  larger  figure  in  contemporary  letters. 
After  leaving  Hartford,  in  1788,  he  went  to  France,  where 
he  resided  for  seventeen  years,  made  a  fortune  in  specula- 
tions, and  became  imbued  with  French  principles,  writing 
a  song  in  praise  of  the  guillotine,  which  gave  great  scandal 
to  his  old  friends  at  home.  In  1805  he  returned  to  America 
and  built  a  fine  residence  near  Washington,  which  he 
called  "  Kalorama."  Barlow's  literary  fame,  in  his  own  gen. 
eration,  rested  upon  his  prodigious  epic,  "  The  Columbiad." 
The  first  form  of  this  was  "The  Vision  of  Columbus,"  pub- 
lished at  Hartford  in  1787.  This  he  afterward  recast  and 
enlarged  into  "  The  Columbiad,"  issued  in  Philadelphia  in 
1807,  and  dedicated  to  Robert  Fulton,  the  inventor  of  the 
steamboat.  This  was  by  far  the  most  sumptuous  piece  of 
bookmaking  that  had  then  been  published  in  America,  and 
was  embellished  with  plates  executed  by  the  best  London 
engravers. 

"  The  Columbiad  "  was  a  grandiose  performance,  and  has 
been  the  theme  of  much  ridicule  by  later  writers.  Haw- 
thorne suggested  its  being  dramatized  and  put  on  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  artillery  and  thunder  and  lightning  ;  and 
E.  P.  Whipple  declared  that  "  no  critic  in  the  last  fifty 
years  had  read  more  than  a  hundred  lines  of  it."  In  its 
ambitiousness  and  its  length,  it  was  symptomatic  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  which  was  patriotically  determined  to  cre- 
ate, by  tour  de  force,  a  national  literature  of  a  size  com- 
mensurate with  the  scale  of  American  nature  and  the 
destinies  of  the  republic.  As  America  was  bigger  than 
Argos  and  Troy  we  ought  to  have  a  bigger  epic  than  the 
"Iliad."  Accordingly,  Barlow  makes  Hesper  fetch  Co- 
lumbus from  his  prison  to  a  "  hill  of  vision,"  where  he  un- 
rolls before  his  eye  a  panorama  of  the  history  of  America, 


58  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

or,  as  our  bards  then  preferred  to  call  it,  Columbia.  He 
shows  him  the  conquest  of  Mexico  by  Cortez  ;  the  rise  and 
fall  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Incas  in  Peru  ;  the  settlements  of 
the  English  colonies  in  North  America  ;  the  old  French  and 
Indian  wars,  the  Eevolution,  ending  with  a  prophecy  of  the 
future  greatness  of  the  new-born  nation.  The  machinery 
of  the  "Vision"  was  borrowed  from  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  books  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  Barlow's  verse  was  the 
ten-syllabled  rhyming  couplet  of  Pope,  and  his  poetic  style 
was  distinguished  by  the  vague,  glittering  imagery  and 
the  false  sublimity  which  marked  the  epic  attempts  of  the 
Queen  Anne  poets.  Though  Barlow  was  but  a  masquer- 
ader  in  true  heroic  he  showed  himself  a  true  poet  in  mock 
heroic.  His  "Hasty  Pudding,"  written  in  Savoy  in  1793 
and  dedicated  to  Mrs.  Washington,  was  thoroughly  Amer- 
ican, in  subject  at  least,  and  its  humor,  though  over-elab- 
orate, is  good.  One  couplet  in  particular  has  prevailed 
against  oblivion : 

"  E'en  in  thy  native  regions  how  I  blush 
To  hear  the  Pennsylvanians  call  thee  Mush .'  " 

Another  Connecticut  poet — one  of  the  seven  who  were 
fondly  named  "  The  Pleiads  of  Connecticut " — was  Timothy 
Dwight,  whose  "Conquest  of  Canaan,"  written  shortly 
after  his  graduation  from  college,  but  not  published  till 
1785,  was,  like  "The  Columbiad,"  an  experiment  toward 
the  domestication  of  the  epic  muse  in  America.  It  was 
written  like  Barlow's  poem,  in  rhymed  couplets,  and  the 
patriotic  impulse  of  the  time  shows  oddly  in  the  introduc- 
tion of  our  Revolutionary  War,  by  way  of  episode,  among 
the  wars  of  Israel.  "  Greenfield  Hill,"  1794,  was  an  idyllic 
and  moralizing  poem,  descriptive  of  a  rural  parish  in  Con- 
necticut of  which  the  author  was  for  a  time  the  pastor.  It 
is  not  quite  without  merit ;  shows  plainly  the  influence  of 
Goldsmith,  Thomson,  and  Beattie,  but  as  a  whole  is  tedious 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  59 

and  tame.  Byron  was  amused  that  there  should  have  been 
an  American  poet  christened  Timothy,  and  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  amusement  would  have  been  the  chief  emotion 
kindled  in  the  breast  of  the  wicked  Voltaire  had  he  ever 
chanced  to  see  the  stern  dedication  to  himself  of  the  same 
poet's  "Triumph  of  Infidelity,"  1788.  Much  more  impor- 
tant than  Dwight's  poetry  was  his  able  "  Theology  Ex- 
plained and  Defended,"  1794,  a  restatement,  with  modifi- 
cations, of  the  Calvinism  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  which 
wras  accepted  by  the  Congregational  churches  of  New 
England  as  an  authoritative  exponent  of  the  orthodoxy  of 
the  time.  His  "  Travels  in  New  England  and  New  York," 
including  descriptions  of  Niagara,  the  White  Mountains, 
Lake  George,  the  Catskills,  and  other  passages  of  natural 
scenery,  not  so  familiar  then  as  now,  was  published  posthu- 
mously in  1821,  was  praised  by  Southey,  and  is  still  read- 
able. As  president  of  Yale  College  from  1795  to  1817, 
Dwight,  by  his  learning  and  ability,  his  sympathy  with 
young  men,  and  the  force  and  dignity  of  his  character,  ex- 
erted a  great  influence  in  the  community. 

The  strong  political  bias  of  the  time  drew  into  its  vortex 
most  of  the  miscellaneous  literature  that  was  produced.  A 
number  of  ballads,  serious  and  comic,  Whig  and  Tory, 
dealing  with  the  battles  and  other  incidents  of  the  long 
war,  enjoyed  a  wide  circulation  in  the  newspapers  or  were 
hawked  about  in  printed  broadsides.  Most  of  these  have 
no  literary  merit,  and  are  now  mere  antiquarian  curiosities. 
A  favorite  piece  on  the  Tory  side  was  the  "  Cow  Chase,"  a 
cleverish  parody  on  "  Chevy  Chase,"  written  by  the  gal- 
lant and  unfortunate  Major  AndrC,  at  the  expense  of 
"Mad"  Anthony  Wayne.  The  national  song  "Yankee 
Doodle  "  was  evolved  during  the  Revolution,  and,  as  is  the 
case  with  "  John  Brown's  Body  "  and  many  other  popular 
melodies,  some  obscurity  hangs  about  its  origin.  The  air 


60  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

was  an  old  one,  and  the  words  of  the  chorus  seem  to  have 
been  adapted  or  corrupted  from  a  Dutch  song,  and  applied 
in  derision  to  the  provincials  by  the  soldiers  of  the  British 
army  as  early  as  1755.  Like  many  another  nickname,  the 
term  Yankee  Doodle  was  taken  up  by  the  nicknamed  and 
proudly  made  their  own.  The  stanza, 

"  Yankee  Doodle  came  to  town,"  etc., 

antedates  the  war ;  but  the  first  complete  set  of  words  to 
the  tune  was  the  "  Yankee's  Return  from  Camp,"  which  is 
apparently  of  the  year  1775.  The  most  popular  humorous 
ballad  on  the  Whig  side  was  the  "  Battle  of  the  Kegs," 
founded  on  a  laughable  incident  of  the  campaign  at  Phila- 
delphia. This  was  written  by  Francis  Hopkinson,  a  Phila- 
delphian,  and  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  Hopkinson  had  some  title  to  rank  as  one 
of  the  earliest  American  humorists.  Without  the  keen 
wit  of  "McFingal,"  some  of  his  "Miscellaneous  Essays 
and  Occasional  Writings,"  published  in  1792,  have  more 
geniality  and  heartiness  than  Trumbull's  satire.  His 
"Letter  on  Whitewashing"  is  a  bit  of  domestic  humor 
that  foretokens  the  Daribury  News  man  ;  and  his  "  Modern 
Learning,"  1784,  a  burlesque  on  college  examinations,  in 
which  a  salt-box  is  described  from  the  point  of  view  of 
metaphysics,  logic,  natural  philosophy,  mathematics,  anat- 
omy, surgery,  and  chemistry,  long  kept  its  place  in  school- 
readers  and  other  collections.  His  son,  Joseph  Hopkinson, 
wrote  the  song  of  "Hail  Columbia,"  which  is  saved  from 
insignificance  only  by  the  music  to  which  it  was  married, 
the  then  popular  air  of  "The  President's  March."  The 
words  were  written  in  1798,  on  the  eve  of  a  threatened  war 
with  France,  and  at  a  time  when  party  spirit  ran  high.  It 
was  sung  nightly  by  crowds  in  the  streets,  and  for  a  whole 
season  by  a  favorite  singer  at  the  theater  ;  for  by  this  time 
there  were  theaters  in  Philadelphia,  in  New  York,  and 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  61 

even  in  puritanic  Boston.  Much  better  than  "  Hail 
Columbia"  was  "The  Star-Spangled  Banner,"  the  words 
of  which  were  composed  by  Francis  Scott  Key,  a  Mary- 
lander,  during  the  bombardment  by  the  British  of  Fort 
McHenry,  near  Baltimore,  in  1812.  More  pretentious  than 
these  was  the  once  celebrated  ode  of  Robert  Treat  Paine, 
Jr.,  "Adams  and  Liberty,"  recited  at  an  anniversary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Charitable  Fire  Society.  The  sale  of 
this  is  said  to  have  netted  its  author  over  $750,  but  it  is, 
notwithstanding,  a  very  wooden  performance.  Paine  was 
a  young  Harvard  graduate,  who  had  married  an  actress 
playing  at  the  Old  Federal  Street  Theater,  the  first  play- 
house opened  in  Boston,  in  1794.  His  name  was  originally 
Thomas,  but  this  was  changed  for  him  by  the  Massachu- 
setts legislature,  because  he  did  not  wish  to  be  confounded 
with  the  author  of  "  The  Age  of  Reason."  "  Dim  are  those 
names  erstwhile  in  battle  loud,"  and  many  an  old  revolu- 
tionary worthy  who  fought  for  liberty  with  sword  and  pen 
is  now  utterly  forgotten,  or  remembered  only  by  some 
phrase  which  has  become  a  current  quotation.  Here  and 
there  a  line  has,  by  accident,  survived  to  do  duty  as  a 
motto  or  inscription,  while  all  its  context  is  buried  in 
oblivion.  Few  have  read  anything  more  of  Jonathan  M. 
Sewall's,  for  example,  than  the  couplet, 

"  No  pent-up  Utica  contracts  your  powers, 
But  the  whole  boundless  continent  is  yours," 

taken  from  his  "Epilogue  to  Cato,"  written  in  1778. 

Another  revolutionary  poet  was  Philip  Freneau — "  that 
rascal  Freneau,"  as  Washington  called  him,  when  annoyed 
by  the  attacks  upon  his  administration  in  Freneau's  Na- 
t ional  Gazette.  He  was  of  Huguenot  descent,  was  a  classmate 
of  Madison  at  Princeton  College,  was  taken  prisoner  by  the 
British  during  the  war,  and  when  the  war  was  over  en- 
gaged in  journalism  as  an  ardent  supporter  of  Jefferson 


62  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

and  the  Democrats.  Freneau's  patriotic  verses  and  politi- 
cal lampoons  are  now  unreadable  ;  but  he  deserves  to  rank 
as  the  first  real  American  poet,  by  virtue  of  his  "  Wild 
Honeysuckle,"  "Indian  Burying-Ground,"  "Indian  Stu- 
dent," and  a  few  other  little  pieces,  which  exhibit  a  grace 
and  delicacy  inherited,  perhaps,  with  his  French  blood. 

Indeed,  to  speak  strictly,  all  of  the  "poets"  hitherto 
mentioned  were  nothing  but  rhymers  ;  but  in  Freneau  we 
meet  with  something  of  beauty  and  artistic  feeling  ;  some- 
thing which  still  keeps  his  verses  fresh.  In  his  treatment 
of  Indian  themes,  in  particular,  appear  for  the  first  time  a 
sense  of  the  picturesque  and  poetic  elements  in  the  char- 
acter and  wild  life  of  the  red  man,  and  that  pensive  senti- 
ment which  the  fading  away  of  the  tribes  toward  the  sun- 
set has  left  in  the  wake  of  their  retreating  footsteps.  In 
this  Freneau  anticipates  Cooper  and  Longfellow,  though 
his  work  is  slight  compared  with  the  "  Leather-stocking 
Tales"  or  "Hiawatha."  At  the  time  when  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  broke  out  the  population  of  the  colonies  was 
over  three  millions  ;  Philadelphia  had  thirty  thousand  in- 
habitants, and  the  frontier  had  retired  to  a  comfortable  dis- 
tance from  the  seaboard.  The  Indian  had  already  grown 
legendary  to  town  dwellers,  and  Freneau  fetches  his  "  In- 
dian Student  "  not  from  the  outskirts  of  the  settlement  but 
from  the  remote  backwoods  of  the  state  : 

"  From  Susquehanna's  farthest  springs 

Where  savage  tribes  pursue  their  game 
(His  blanket  tied  with  yellow  strings), 

A  shepherd  of  the  forest  came." 

Campbell  "  lifted  "—in  his  poem  "O'Connor's  Child"— 
the  last  line  of  the  following  stanza  from  Freneau's  "In- 
dian Burying-Ground  "  : 

"  By  midnight  moons  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed, 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues— 
The  hunter  and  the  deer,  a  shade." 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  63 

And  Walter  Scott  did  Freneau  the  honor  to  borrow,  in 
"Marmion,"  the  final  line  of  one  of  the  stanzas  of  his 
poem  on  the  battle  of  Eutaw  Springs  : 

"  They  saw  their  injured  country's  woe, 
The  flaming  town,  the  wasted  field  ; 

Then  rushed  to  meet  the  insulting  foe ; 
They  took  the  spear,  but  left  the  shield." 

Scott  inquired  of  an  American  gentlemen  who  visited  him 
the  authorship  of  this  poem,  which  he  had  by  heart,  and 
pronounced  it  as  fine  a  thing  of  the  kind  as  there  was  in 
the  language. 

The  American  drama  and  American  prose  fiction  had  their 
beginning  during  the  period  now  under  review.  A  com- 
pany of  English  players  came  to  this  country  in  1752  and 
made  the  tour  of  many  of  the  principal  towns.  The  first 
play  acted  here  by  professionals  on  a  public  stage  was 
the  "Merchant  of  Venice,"  which  was  given  by  the  Eng- 
lish company  at  Williamsburg,  Va.,  in  1752.  The  first 
regular  theater  building  was  at  Annapolis,  Md.,  where  in 
the  same  year  this  troupe  performed,  among  other  pieces, 
Farquhar's  "Beaux'  Stratagem."  In  1753  a  theater  was 
built  in  New  York,  and  one  in  1759  in  Philadelphia.  The 
Quakers  of  Philadelphia  and  the  Puritans  of  Boston  were 
strenuously  opposed  to  the  acting  of  plays,  and  in  the  latter 
city  the  players  were  several  times  arrested  during  the  per- 
formances, under  a  Massachusetts  law  forbidding  dramatic 
performances.  At  Newport,  R.  I.,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
was  a  health  resort  for  planters  from  the  Southern  States 
and  the  West  Indies,  and  the  largest  slave-market  in  the 
North,  the  actors  were  hospitably  received.  The  first  play 
known  to  have  been  written  by  an  American  was  "The 
Prince  of  Parthia,"  1765,  a  closet  drama,  by  Thomas  God- 
frey, of  Philadelphia.  The  first  play  by  an  American 
writer,  acted  by  professionals  in  a  public  theater,  was  Roy- 


64  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

all  Tyler's  "Contrast,"  performed  in  New  York  in  1786. 
The  former  of  these  was  very  high  tragedy,  and  the  lat- 
ter very  low  comedy  ;  and  neither  of  them  is  otherwise 
remarkable  than  as  being  the  first  of  a  long  line  of  indif- 
ferent dramas.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  American  dramatic 
literature  worth  speaking  of ;  not  a  single  American  play 
of  even  the  second  rank,  unless  we  except  a  few  graceful 
parlor  comedies,  like  Mr.  HowelPs  "Elevator"  and 
"Sleeping-Car."  Royall  Tyler,  the  author  of  "The  Con- 
trast," cut  quite  a  figure  in  his  day  as  a  wit  and  journalist, 
and  eventually  became  chief-justice  of  Vermont.  His 
comedy,  "  The  Georgia  Spec,"  1797,  had  a  great  run  in  Bos- 
ton, and  his  "Algerine  Captive,"  published  in  the  same 
year,  was  one  of  the  earliest  American  novels.  It  was  a 
rambling  tale  of  adventure,  constructed  somewhat  upon  the 
plan  of  Smollett's  novels  and  dealing  with  the  piracies 
which  led  to  the  war  between  the  United  States  and  Al- 
giers in  1815. 

Charles  Brockden  Brown,  the  first  American  novelist  of 
any  note,  was  also  the  first  professional  man  of  letters  in 
this  country  who  supported  himself  entirely  by  his  pen.  He 
was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1771,  lived  a  part  of  his  life  in 
New  York  and  part  in  his  native  city,  where  he  started,  in 
1803,  The  Literary  Magazine  and  American  Register.  During 
the  years  1798-1801  he  published  in  rapid  succession  six  ro- 
mances, "Wieland,"  "Ormond,"  "Arthur  Mervyn,"  "Edgar 
Huntley,"  "Clara  Howard,"  and  "Jane  Talbot."  Brown 
was  an  invalid  and  something  of  a  recluse,  with  a  relish  for 
the  ghastly  in  incident  and  the  morbid  in  character.  He  was 
in  some  points  a  prophecy  of  Poe  and  Hawthorne,  though 
his  art  was  greatly  inferior  to  Poe's,  and  almost  infinitely 
so  to  Hawthorne's.  His  books  belong  more  properly  to  the 
contemporary  school  of  fiction  in  England  which  preceded 
the  "  Waverley  Novels  "—to  the  class  that  includes  Beck- 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  65 

ford's  "Vathek,"  Godwin's  "Caleb  Williams"  and  "St. 
Leon,"  Mrs.  Shelley's  "Frankenstein,"  and  such  "Gothic" 
romances  as  Lewis's  "Monk,"  Walpole's  "Castle  of 
Otranto,"  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  "Mysteries  of  Udolpho." 
A  distinguishing  characteristic  of  this  whole  school  is  what 
we  may  call  the  clumsy-horrible.  Brown's  romances  are  not 
wanting  in  inventive  power;  in  occasional  situations  that 
are  intensely  thrilling,  and  in  subtle  analysis  of  character  ; 
but  they  are  fatally  defective  in  art.  The  narrative  is  by 
turns  abrupt  and  tiresomely  prolix,  proceeding  not  so  much 
by  dialogue  as  by  elaborate  dissection  and  discussion  of 
motives  and  states  of  mind,  interspersed  with  the  author's 
reflections.  The  wild  improbabilities  of  plot  and  the  un- 
natural and  even  monstrous  developments  of  character  are 
in  startling  contrast  with  the  old-fashioned  preciseness  of 
the  language  ;  the  conversations,  when  there  are  any,  being 
conducted  in  that  insipid  dialect  in  which  a  fine  woman 
was  called  an  "elegant  female."  The  following  is  a  sample 
description  of  one  of  Brown's  heroines,  and  is  taken  from 
his  novel  of  "Ormond,"the  leading  character  in  which — 
a  combination  of  unearthly  intellect  with  fiendish  wicked- 
ness— is  thought  to  have  been  suggested  by  Aaron  Burr  : 
"  Helena  Cleves  was  endowed  with  every  feminine  and  fas- 
cinating quality.  Her  features  were  modified  by  the  most 
transient  sentiments  and  were  the  seat  of  a  softness  at  all 
times  blushful  and  bewitching.  All  those  graces  of  sym- 
metry, smoothness,  and  luster,  which  assemble  in  the  im- 
agination of  the  painter  when  he  calls  from  the  bosom  of 
her  natal  deep  the  Paphian  divinity,  blended  their  perfec- 
tions in  the  shade,  complexion,  and  hair  of  this  lady." 
But,  alas  !  "  Helena's  intellectual  deficiencies  could  not  be 
concealed.  She  was  proficient  in  the  elements  of  no 
science.  The  doctrine  of  lines  and  surfaces  was  as  dispro- 
portionate with  her  intellects  as  with  those  of  the  mocking- 


66  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

bird.  She  had  not  reasoned  on  the  principles  of  human 
action,  nor  examined  the  structure  of  society.  .  .  .  She 
could  not  commune  in  their  native  dialect  with  the  sages  of 
Rome  and  Athens.  .  .  .  The  constitution  of  nature, 
the  attributes  of  its  Author,  the  arrangement  of  the  parts 
of  the  external  universe,  and  the  substance,  modes  of  oper- 
ation, and  ultimate  destiny  of  human  intelligence  were 
enigmas  unsolved  and  insoluble  by  her." 

Brown  frequently  raises  a  superstructure  of  mystery  on  a 
basis  ludicrously  weak.  Thus  the  hero  of  his  first  novel, 
"Wieland"  (whose  father  anticipates  "Old  Krook"  in 
Dickens's  "Bleak  House,"  by  dying  of  spontaneous  com- 
bustion), is  led  on  by  what  he  mistakes  for  spiritual  voices 
to  kill  his  wife  and  children  ;  and  the  voices  turn  out  to  be 
produced  by  the  ventriloquism  of  one  Carwin,  the  villain  of 
the  story.  Similarly  in  "Edgar  Huntley,"  the  plot  turns 
upon  the  phenomena  of  sleep-walking.  Brown  had  the 
good  sense  to  place  the  scene  of  his  romances  in  his  own 
country,  and  the  only  passages  in  them  which  have  now  a 
living  interest  are  his  descriptions  of  wilderness  scenery 
in  "  Edgar  Huntley,"  and  his  graphic  account  in  "  Arthur 
Mervyn  "  of  the  yellow-fever  epidemic  in  Philadelphia  in 
1793.  Shelley  was  an  admirer  of  Brown,  and  his  experi- 
ments in  prose  fiction,  such  as  "  Zastrozzi "  and  "St. 
Irvyue  the  Rosicrucian,"  are  of  the  same  abnormal  and 
speculative  type. 

Another  book  which  falls  within  this  period  was  the 
Journal,  1774,  of  John  Woolman,  a  New  Jersey  Quaker, 
which  has  received  the  highest  praise  from  Channing, 
Charles  Lamb,  and  many  others.  "Get  the  writings  of 
John  Woolman  by  heart,"  wrote  Lamb,  "and  love  the 
early  Quakers."  The  charm  of  this  journal  resides  in  its 
singular  sweetness  aud  innocence  of  feeling,  the  "deep 
inward  stillness"  peculiar  to  the  people  called  Quakers. 


The  Revolutionary  Period.  67 

Apart  from  his  constant  use  of  certain  phrases  peculiar  to 
the  Friends,  Woolman's  English  is  also  remarkably  grace- 
ful and  pure,  the  transparent  medium  of  a  soul  absolutely 
sincere,  and  tender  and  humble  in  its  sincerity.  When 
not  working  at  his  trade  as  a  tailor  Woolman  spent  his 
time  in  visiting  and  ministering  to  the  monthly,  quarterly, 
and  yearly  meetings  of  Friends,  traveling  on  horseback  to 
their  scattered  communities  in  the  backwoods  of  Virginia 
and  North  Carolina,  and  northward  along  the  coast  as  far 
as  Boston  and  Nantucket.  He  was  under  a  "concern" 
and  a  "heavy  exercise"  touching  the  keeping  of  slaves, 
and  by  his  writing  and  speaking  did  much  to  influence  the 
Quakers  against  slavery.  His  love  went  out,  indeed,  to  all 
the  wretched  and  oppressed  ;  to  sailors,  and  to  the  Indians 
in  particular.  One  of  his  most  perilous  journeys  was  made 
to  the  settlements  of  Moravian  Indians  in  the  wilderness  of 
western  Pennsylvania,  at  Bethlehem,  and  at  Wehaloosing, 
on  the  Susquehanna.  Some  of  the  scruples  which  Wool- 
man felt,  and  the  quaint  ndivetg  with  which  he  expresses 
them,  may  make  the  modern  reader  smile,  but  the  smile 
will  be  very  close  to  a  tear.  Thus,  when  in  England — 
where  he  died  in  1772 — he  would  not  ride  nor  send  a  letter 
by  mail-coach,  because  the  poor  postboys  were  compelled 
to  ride  long  stages  in  winter  nights,  and  were  sometimes 
frozen  to  death.  "  So  great  is  the  hurry  in  the  spirit  of  this 
world  that,  in  aiming  to  do  business  quickly  and  to  gain 
wealth,  the  creation  at  this  day  doth  loudly  groan." 
Again,  having  reflected  that  war  was  caused  by  luxury  in 
dress,  etc.,  the  use  of  dyed  garments  grew  uneasy  to  him, 
and  he  got  and  wore  a  hat  of  the  natural  color  of  the 
fur.  "  In  attending  meetings  this  singularity  was  a  trial 
tome,  .  .  .  and  some  Friends,  who  knew  not  from 
what  motives  I  wore  it,  grew  shy  of  me.  .  .  .  Those 
who  spoke  with  me  I  generally  informed,  in  a  few  words, 


68  Initial  Studies  in  American  Lettees. 

that  I  believed  my  wearing  it  was  not  in  my  own  will." 


1.  "Representative  American  Orations."  Edited  by  Alex- 
ander Johnston.  New  York  :  1884. 

2.  "  The  Federalist."     New  York  :  1863. 

3.  THOMAS  JEFFERSON  :  "Notes  on  Virginia."    Boston: 
1829. 

4.  TIMOTHY  DWIGHT  :    "Travels  in  New  England  and 
New  York."    New  Haven  :  1821. 

5.  JOHN  TRUMBULL  :  "McFingal."    Trumbull's  Poetical 
Works.    Hartford :  1820. 

6.  JOEL  BARLOW  :  "Hasty  Pudding."  FRANCIS  HOPKIN- 
SON  :  "Modern  Learning."    PHILIP  FRENEAU  :   "Indian 
Student,"    "  Indian   Burying-Ground,"    "  White  Honey- 
suckle."   Vol.  I.  of  Duyckinck's  "  Cyclopedia  of  American 
Literature."    New  York  :  1866. 

7.  CHARLES  BROCKDEN   BROWN:    "Arthur   Mervyn." 
Boston  :  1827. 

8.  "The  Journal  of  John  Woolman."   With  an  Introduc- 
tion by  John  G.  Whittier.    Boston  :  1871. 

9.  CHARLES  F.  RICHARDSON:   "American  Literature." 
New  York  :  1887. 

10.  JOHN  NICHOL  :  "  American  Literature."  Edinburgh  : 
1882. 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION — 1815-1837. 

THE  attempt  to  preserve  a  strictly  chronological  order 
must  here  be  abandoned.  About  all  the  American  litera- 
ture in  existence  that  is  of  any  value  as  literature  is  the 
product  of  the  past  three  quarters  of  a  century,  and  the 
men  who  produced  it,  though  older  or  younger,  were  still 
contemporaries.  Irving's  "Knickerbocker's  History  of 
New  York,"  1809,  was  published  within  the  recollection  of 
some  yet  living,  and  the  venerable  poet  Richard  H.  Dana 
— Irving's  junior  by  only  four  years — survived  to  1879, 
when  the  youngest  of  the  generation  of  writers  that  now 
occupy  public  attention  had  already  won  their  spurs.  Bry- 
ant, whose  "  Thanatopsis  "  was  printed  in  1816,  lived  down 
to  1878.  He  saw  the  beginnings  of  our  national  literature, 
and  he  saw  almost  as  much  of  the  latest  phase  of  it  as  we 
see  to-day  in  this  year  1895.  Still,  even  within  the  limits 
of  a  single  lifetime,  there  have  been  progress  and  change. 
And  so,  while  it  will  happen  that  the  consideration  of 
writers,  a  part  of  whose  work  falls  between  the  dates  at 
the  head  of  this  chapter,  may  be  postponed  to  subsequent 
chapters,  we  may  in  a  general  way  follow  the  sequence  of 
time. 

The  period  between  the  close  of  the  second  war  with 
England,  in  1815,  and  the  great  financial  crash  of  1837  has 
been  called  in  language  attributed  to  President  Monroe, 
"the  era  of  good  feeling."  It  was  a  time  of  peace  and 
prosperity,  of  rapid  growth  in  population  and  rapid  exten- 


70  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

sion  of  territory.  The  new  nation  was  entering  upon  its 
vast  estates  and  beginning  to  realize  its  manifest  destiny. 
The  peace  with  Great  Britain,  by  calling  off  the  Canadian 
Indians  and  the  other  tribes  in  alliance  with  England,  had 
opened  up  the  Northwest  to  settlement.  Ohio  had  been 
admitted  as  a  state  in  1802  ;  but  at  the  time  of  President 
Monroe's  tour,  in  1817,  Cincinnati  had  only  seven  thousand 
inhabitants,  and  half  of  the  state  was  unsettled.  The  Ohio 
River  flowed  for  most  of  its  course  through  an  unbroken 
wilderness.  Chicago  was  merely  a  fort.  Hitherto  the  emi- 
gration to  the  West  had  been  sporadic  ;  now  it  took  on  the 
dimensions  of  a  general  and  almost  a  concerted  exodus. 
This  movement  was  stimulated  in  New  England  by  the 
cold  summer  of  1816  and  the  late  spring  of  1817,  which 
produced  a  scarcity  of  food  that  amounted  in  parts  of  the 
interior  to  a  veritable  famine.  All  through  this  period 
sounded  the  ax  of  the  pioneer  clearing  the  forest  about  his 
log-cabin,  and  the  rumble  of  the  canvas-covered  emigrant- 
wagon  over  the  primitive  highways  which  crossed  the 
Alleghenies  or  followed  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk.  S.  G. 
Goodrich,  known  in  letters  as  "  Peter  Parley,"  in  his 
"Recollections  of  a  Lifetime,"  1856,  describes  the  part  of 
the  movement  which  he  had  witnessed  as  a  boy  in  Fair- 
field  County,  Connecticut:  "I  remember  very  well  the 
tide  of  emigration  through  Connecticut,  on  its  way  to  the 
West,  during  the  summer  of  1817.  Some  persons  went  in 
covered  wagons — frequently  a  family  consisting  of  father, 
mother,  and  nine  small  children,  with  one  at  the  breast, — 
some  on  foot,  and  some  crowded  together  under  the  cover, 
with  kettles,  gridirons,  feather-beds,  crockery,  and  the 
family  Bible,  Watts's  Psalms  and  Hymns,  and  Webster's 
Spelling-book— the  lares  and  penates  of  the  household. 
Others  started  in  ox-carts,  and  trudged  on  at  the  rate  of  ten 
miles  a  day.  .  .  .  Many  of  these  persons  were  in 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  71 

a  state  of  poverty,  and  begged  their  way  as  they  went. 
Some  died  before  they  reached  the  expected  Canaan  ;  many 
perished  after  their  arrival  from  fatigue  and  privation  ;  and 
others  from  the  fever  and  ague,  which  was  then  certain  to 
attack  the  new  settlers.  It  was,  I  think,  in  1818  that  I 
published  a  small  tract  entitled  '  'Tother  Side  of  Ohio ' — 
that  is,  the  other  view,  in  contrast  to  the  popular  notion 
that  it  was  the  paradise  of  the  world.  It  was  written  by 
Dr.  Hand,  a  talented  young  physician  of  Berlin,  who  had 
made  a  visit  to  the  West  about  these  days.  It  consisted 
mainly  of  vivid  but  painful  pictures  of  the  accidents  and 
incidents  attending  this  wholesale  migration.  The  roads 
over  the  Alleghenies,  between  Philadelphia  and  Pittsburg, 
were  then  rude,  steep,  and  dangerous,  and  some  of  the 
more  precipitous  slopes  were  consequently  strewn  with  the 
carcasses  of  wagons,  carts,  horses,  oxen,  which  had  made 
shipwreck  in  their  perilous  descents." 

But  in  spite  of  the  hardships  of  the  settler's  life  the 
spirit  of  that  time,  as  reflected  in  its  writings,  was  a  hopeful 
and  a  light-hearted  one. 

"  Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way," 
runs  the  famous  line  from  Berkeley's  poem  on  America. 
The  New  Englanders  who  removed  to  the  Western  Reserve 
went  there  to  better  themselves  ;  and  their  children  found 
themselves  the  owners  of  broad  acres  of  virgin  soil  in  place 
of  the  stony  hill  pastures  of  Berkshire  and  Litchfleld. 
There  was  an  attraction,  too,  about  the  wild,  free  life  of  the 
frontiersman,  with  all  its  perils  and  discomforts.  The  life 
of  Daniel  Boone,  the  pioneer  of  Kentucky — that  "  dark 
and  bloody  ground," — is  a  genuine  romance.  Hardly  less 
picturesque  was  the  old  river  life  of  the  Ohio  boatmen, 
before  the  coming  of  steam  banished  their  queer  craft  from 
the  water.  Between  1810  and  1840  the  center  of  popula- 
tion in  the  United  States  had  moved  from  the  Potomac  to 


72  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

the  neighborhood,  of  Clarksburg,  in  West  Virginia,  and  the 
population  itself  had  increased  from  seven  to  seventeen 
millions.  The  gain  was  made  partly  in  the  East  and 
South,  but  the  general  drift  was  westward.  During  the 
years  now  under  review  the  following  new  states  were  ad- 
mitted in  the  order  named  :  Indiana,  Mississippi,  Illinois, 
Alabama,  Maine,  Missouri,  Arkansas,  Michigan.  Ken- 
tucky and  Tennessee  had  been  made  states  in  the  last  years 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  Louisiana — acquired  by 
purchase  from  France — in  1812. 

The  settlers,  in  their  westward  march,  left  large  tracts  of 
wilderness  behind  them.  They  took  up  first  the  rich  bot- 
tom-lands along  the  river  courses,  the  Ohio  and  Miami  and 
Licking,  and  later  the  valleys  of  the  Mississippi  and  Miss- 
ouri and  the  shores  of  the  Great  Lakes.  But  there  still  re- 
mained backwoods  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  though 
the  cities  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  had  each  a  popu- 
lation of  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  in  1815.  When 
the  Erie  Canal  was  opened,  in  1825,  it  ran  through  a  primi- 
tive forest.  N.  P.  Willis,  who  went  by  canal  to  Buffalo  and 
Niagara  in  1827,  describes  the  houses  and  stores  at  Roches- 
ter as  standing  among  the  burnt  stumps  left  by  the  first 
settlers.  In  the  same  year  that  saw  the  opening  of  this 
great  waterway,  the  Indian  tribes,  numbering  now  about 
one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  souls,  were  moved  across 
the  Mississippi.  Their  power  had  been  broken  by  General 
Harrison's  victory  over  Tecumseh  at  the  battle  of  Tippe- 
canoe,  in  1811,  and  they  were  in  fact  mere  remnants  and 
fragments  of  the  race  which  had  hung  upon  the  skirts  of 
civilization  and  disputed  the  advance  of  the  white  man  for 
two  centuries.  It  was  not  until  some  years  later  than  this 
that  railroads  began  to  take  an  important  share  in  opening 
up  new  country. 

The  restless  energy,  the  love  of  adventure,  the  sanguine 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  73 

anticipation  which  characterized  American  thought  at  this 
time,  the  picturesque  contrasts  to  be  seen  in  each  mushroom 
town  where  civilization  was  encroaching  on  the  raw  edge  of 
the  wilderness — all  these  found  expression,  not  only  in  such 
well-known  books  as  Cooper's  "Pioneers,"  1823,  and  Irving's 
"Tour  on  the  Prairies,"  1835,  but  in  the  minor  literature 
which  is  read  to-day,  if  at  all,  not  for  its  own  sake, 
but  for  the  light  that  it  throws  on  the  history  of  national 
development :  in  such  books  as  Paulding's  story  of  "West- 
ward Ho  !"  and  his  poem,  "  The  Backwoodsman,"  1818  ;  or 
as  Timothy  Flint's  "Recollections,"  1826,  and  his  "Geog- 
raphy and  History  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,"  1827.  It 
was  not  an  age  of  great  books,  but  it  was  an  age  of  large 
ideas  and  expanding  prospects.  The  new  consciousness  of 
empire  uttered  itself  hastily,  crudely,  ran  into  buncombe, 
"spread-eagleism,"  and  other  noisy  forms  of  patriotic 
exultation  ;  but  it  was  thoroughly  democratic  and  Ameri- 
can. Though  literature — or  at  least  the  best  literature  of 
the  time — was  not  yet  emancipated  from  English  models, 
thought  and  life,  at  any  rate,  were  no  longer  a  bondage — 
no  longer  provincial.  And  it  is  significant  that  the  party 
in  office  during  these  years  was  the  Democratic,  the  party 
which  had  broken  most  completely  with  conservative  tra- 
ditions. The  famous  "  Monroe  doctrine  "  was  a  pronuncia- 
mento  of  this  aggressive  democracy,  and  though  the 
Federalists  returned  to  power  for  a  single  term,  under  John 
Quincy  Adams  (1825-29),  Andrew  Jackson  received  the 
largest  number  of  electoral  votes,  and  Adams  was  only 
chosen  by  the  House  of  Representatives  in  the  absence  of  a 
majority  vote  for  any  one  candidate.  At  the  close  of  his 
term,  "Old  Hickory,"  the  hero  of  the  people,  the  most 
characteristically  democratic  of  our  presidents,  and  the 
first  backwoodsman  who  entered  the  White  House,  was 
borne  into  office  on  a  wave  of  popular  enthusiasm. 


74  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

We  have  now  arrived  at  the  time  when  American  litera- 
ture, in  the  higher  aud  stricter  sense  of  the  term,  really  be- 
gan to  have  an  existence.  S.  G.  Goodrich,  who  settled  at 
Hartford  as  a  bookseller  and  publisher  in  1818,  says,  in  his 
"  Eecollections  " :  "About  this  time  I  began  to  think  of 
trying  to  bring  out  original  American  works.  .  .  .  The 
general  impression  was  that  we  had  not,  and  could  not 
have,  a  literature.  It  was  the  precise  point  at  which 
Sidney  Smith  had  uttered  that  bitter  taunt  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review,  '  Who  reads  an  American  book  ?  '  .  .  It 
was  positively  injurious  to  the  commercial  credit  of  a 
bookseller  to  undertake  American  works."  Washington 
Irving  (1783-1859)  was  the  first  American  author  whose 
books,  as  books,  obtained  recognition  abroad  ;  whose  name 
was  thought  worthy  of  mention  beside  the  names  of 
English  contemporary  authors,  like  Byron,  Scott,  and 
Coleridge.  He  was  also  the  first  American  writer  whose 
writings  are  still  read  for  their  own  sake.  We  read 
Mather's  "Magnalia"  and  Franklin's  "Autobiography" 
and  Trumbull's  "McFingal" — if  we  read  them  at  all — as 
history,  and  to  learn  about  the  times  or  the  men.  But  we 
read  "  The  Sketch  Book  "  and  "  Knickerbocker's  History  of 
New  York"  and  "The  Conquest  of  Granada"  for  them- 
selves and  for  the  pleasure  that  they  give  as  pieces  of  liter- 
ary art. 

We  have  arrived,  too,  at  a  time  when  we  may  apply  a 
more  cosmopolitan  standard  to  the  works  of  American 
writers,  and  may  disregard  many  a  minor  author  whose 
productions  would  have  cut  some  figure  had  they  come  to 
light  amid  the  poverty  of  our  colonial  age.  Hundreds  of 
these  forgotten  names,  with  specimens  of  their  unread 
writings,  are  consigned  to  a  limbo  of  immortality  in  the 
pages  of  Duyckinck's  "  Cyclopedia"  and  of  Griswold's 
"Poets  of  America"  and  "Prose  Writers  of  America." 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  75 

We  may  select  here  for  special  mention,  and  as  most  repre- 
sentative of  the  thought  of  their  time,  the  names  of  Irving, 
Cooper,  Webster,  and  Channing. 

A  generation  was  now  coming  upon  the  stage  who  could 
recall  no  other  government  in  this  country  than  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States,  and  to  whom  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  was  but  a  tradition.  Born  in  the  very  year 
of  the  peace,  it  was  a  part  of  Irving's  mission,  by  the  sym- 
pathetic charm  of  his  writings  and  by  the  cordial  recog- 
nition which  he  won  in  both  countries,  to  allay  the 
soreness  which  the  second  war,  of  1812-15,  had  left  between 
England  and  America.  He  was  well  fitted  for  the  task  of 
mediator.  Conservative  by  nature,  early  drawn  to  the  ven- 
erable worship  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  retrospective  in 
his  tastes,  with  a  preference  for  the  past  and  its  historic  as- 
sociations, which,  even  in  young  America,  led  him  to  invest 
the  Hudson  and  the  region  about  New  York  with  a  legend- 
ary interest,  he  wrote  of  American  themes  in  an  English 
fashion,  and  interpreted  to  an  American  public  the  mellow 
attractiveness  that  he  found  in  the  life  and  scenery  of  Old 
England.  He  lived  in  both  countries,  and  loved  them 
both  ;  and  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Irving  is  more  of  an 
English  or  of  an  American  writer.  His  first  visit  to 
Europe,  in  1804-6,  occupied  nearly  two  years.  From  1815 
to  1832  he  was  abroad  continuously,  and  his  "  domicile," 
as  the  lawyers  say,  during  these  seventeen  years  was  really 
in  England,  though  a  portion  of  his  time  was  spent  upon 
the  Continent,  and  several  successive  years  in  Spain,  where 
he  engaged  upon  the  "  Life  of  Columbus,"  "  The  Conquest 
of  Granada,"  the  "Companions  of  Columbus,"  and  "  The 
Alhambra,"  all  published  between  1828  and  1832.  From 
1842  to  1846  he  was  again  in  Spain  as  American  minister  at 
Madrid. 

Irving  was  the  last  and  greatest  of  the  Addisonians.    His 


76  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

boyish  letters,  signed  "Jonathan  Oldstyle,"  contributed  in 
1802  to  his  brother's  newspaper,  the  Morning  Chronicle, 
were,  like  Franklin's  "  Busybody,"  close  imitations  of  the 
"Spectator."  To  the  same  family  belonged  his  "Salma- 
gundi "  papers,  1807,  a  series  of  town  satires  on  New  York 
society,  written  in  conjunction  with  his  brother  William 
and  with  James  K.  Paulding.  The  little  tales,  essays,  and 
sketches  which  compose  "  The  Sketch  Book  "  were  written 
in  England,  and  published  in  America,  in  periodical  num- 
bers, in  1819-20.  In  this,  which  is  in  some  respects  his  best 
book,  he  still  maintained  that  attitude  of  observation  and 
spectatorship  taught  him  by  Addison.  The  volume  had  a 
motto  taken  from.  Burton  :  "  I  have  no  wife  nor  children, 
good  or  bad,  to  provide  for — a  mere  spectator  of  other  men's 
fortunes,"  etc.  ;  and  "  The  Author's  Account  of  Himself" 
began  in  true  Addisonian  fashion  :  "  I  was  always  fond  of 
visiting  new  scenes  and  observing  strange  characters  and 
manners." 

But  though  never  violently  "American,"  like  some  later 
writers  who  have  consciously  sought  to  throw  off  the  tram- 
mels of  English  tradition,  Irving  was  in  a  real  way  orig- 
inal. His  most  distinct  addition  to  our  national  literature 
was  in  his  creation  of  what  has  been  called  "  the  Knicker- 
bocker legend."  He  was  the  first  to  make  use,  for  literary 
purposes,  of  the  old  Dutch  traditions  which  clustered  about 
the  romantic  scenery  of  the  Hudson.  Colonel  T.  \V.  Hig- 
ginson,  in  his  "History  of  the  United  States,"  tells  how 
"  Mrs.  Josiah  Quincy,  sailing  up  that  river  in  1786,  when 
Irving  was  a  child  three  years  old,  records  that  the  captain 
of  the  sloop  had  a  legend,  either  supernatural  or  traditional, 
for  every  scene,  '  and  not  a  mountain  reared  its  head  un- 
connected with  some  marvelous  story.'  "  The  material  thus 
at  hand  Irving  shaped  into  his  "Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New  York,"  into  the  immortal  story  of  "Rip  Van 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion. 


Winkle  "  and  "  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  "  (both  pub- 
lished in  "  The  Sketch  Book"),  and  into  later  additions  to 
the  same  realm  of  fiction,  such  as  "  Dolph  Heyliger"  (in 
"  Bracebridge  Hall"),  the  "Money  Diggers,"  "  Wolfert 
Webber,"  and  "  Kidd  the  Pirate"  (in  the  "Tales  of  a 
Traveler  "),  and  some  of  the  miscellanies  from  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine,  collected  into  a  volume,  in  1855,  under  the 
title  of  "  Wolfert's  Roost." 

The  book  which  made  Irving's  reputation  was  his 
"  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York,"  1809,  a  burlesque 
chronicle,  making  fun  of  the  old  Dutch  settlers  of  New 
Amsterdam,  and  attributed,  by  a  familiar  and  now  some- 
what threadbare  device,*  to  a  little  old  gentleman  named 
Diedrich  Knickerbocker,  whose  manuscript  had  come  into 
the  editor's  hands.  The  book  was  gravely  dedicated  to  the 
New  York  Historical  Society,  and  it  is  said  to  have  been 
quoted,  as  authentic  history,  by  a  certain  German  scholar 
named  Goeller,  in  a  note  on  a  passage  in  Thucydides.  This 
story,  though  well  vouched,  is  hard  of  belief;  for  "  Knicker- 
bocker," though  excellent  fooling,  has  nothing  of  the  grave 
irony  of  Swift  in  his  "  Modest  Proposal "  or  of  Defoe  in  his 
"Short  Way  with  Dissenters."  Its  mock-heroic  intention 
is  as  transparent  as  in  Fielding's  parodies  of  Homer,  which 
it  somewhat  resembles,  particularly  in  the  delightfully  ab- 
surd description  of  the  mustering  of  the  clans  under  Peter 
Stuyvesant  and  the  attack  on  the  Swedish  Fort  Christina. 
"Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York"  was  a  real  ad- 
dition to  the  comic  literature  of  the  world,  a  work  of  genu- 
ine humor,  original  and  vital.  Walter  Scott  said  that  it 
reminded  him  closely  of  Swift,  and  had  touches  resembling 
Sterne.  It  is  not  necessary  to  claim  for  Irving's  little  mas- 
terpiece a  place  beside  "  Gulliver's  Travels  "  and  "  Tristram 


*  Compare     Carlyle's    Herr    Diogenes    Teufelsdrockh,    in    "Sartor 
Resartus,"  the  author  of  the  famous  "  Clothes  Philosophy." 


78  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Shandy."  But  it  was,  at  least,  the  first  American  book  in 
the  lighter  departments  of  literature  which  needed  no 
apology  and  stood  squarely  on  its  own  legs.  It  was  writ- 
ten,too,  at  just  the  right  time.  Although  New  Amsterdam 
had  become  New  York  as  early  as  1664,  the  impress  of  its 
first  settlers,  with  their  quaint  conservative  ways,  was  still 
upon  it  when  Irving  was  a  boy.  The  descendants  of  the 
Dutch  families  formed  a  definite  element  not  only  in  Man- 
hattan, but  all  up  along  the  kills  of  the  Hudson,  at  Albany, 
at  Schenectady,  in  Westchester  County,  at  Hoboken,  and 
Communipaw,  localities  made  familiar  to  him  in  many  a 
ramble  and  excursion.  He  lived  to  see  the  little  provincial 
town  of  his  birth  grow  into  a  great  metropolis,  in  which  all 
national  characteristics  were  blended  together,  and  a  tide 
of  immigration  from  Europe  and  New  England  flowed 
over  the  old  landmarks  and  obliterated  them  utterly. 

Although  Irving  was  the  first  to  reveal  to  his  countrymen 
the  literary  possibilities  of  their  early  history  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  with  moderate  American  life  he  had 
little  sympathy.  He  hated  politics,  and  in  the  restless 
democratic  movement  of  the  time,  as  we  have  described  it, 
he  fouiid  no  inspiration.  This  moderate  and  placid  gentle- 
man, with  his  distrust  of  all  kinds  of  fanaticism,  had  no 
liking  for  the  Puritans  or  for  their  descendants,  the  New 
England  Yankees,  if  we  may  judge  from  his  sketch  of 
Ichabod  Crane  in  "The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow."  His 
genius  was  retrospective,  and  his  imagination,  like  Scott's, 
was  the  historic  imagination.  In  crude  America  his  fancy 
took  refuge  in  the  picturesque  aspects  of  the  past,  in 
"survivals"  like  the  Knickerbocker  Dutch  and  the  Aca- 
dian peasants,  whose  isolated  communities  on  the  lower 
Mississippi  he  visited  and  described.  He  turned  naturally 
to  the  ripe  civilization  of  the  Old  World.  He  was  our  first 
picturesque  tourist,  the  first  "  American  in  Europe."  He 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  79 

rediscovered  England,  whose  ancient  churches,  quiet  land- 
scapes, memory-haunted  cities,  Christmas  celebrations,  and 
rural  festivals  had  for  him  an  unfailing  attraction.  With 
pictures  of  these,  for  the  most  part,  he  filled  the  pages  of 
"The  Sketch  Book"  and  "Bracebridge  Hall,"  1822. 
Delightful  as  are  these  English  sketches,  in  which  the 
author  conducts  his  reader  to  Windsor  Castle,  or  Stratford- 
on-Avon,  or  the  Boar's  Head  Tavern,  or  sits  beside  him  on 
the  box  of  the  old  English  stage-coach,  or  shares  with  him 
the  Yule-tide  cheer  at  the  ancient  English  country-house, 
their  interest  has  somewhat  faded.  The  pathos  of  "  The 
Broken  Heart "  and  "  The  Pride  of  the  Village,"  the  mild 
satire  of  "The  Art  of  Book-Making,"  the  rather  obvious 
reflections  in  "  Westminster  Abbey  "  are  not  exactly  to  the 
taste  of  this  generation.  They  are  the  literature  of  leisure 
and  retrospection  ;  and  already  Irving's  gentle  elaboration, 
the  refined  and  slightly  artificial  beauty  of  his  style,  and 
his  persistently  genial  and  sympathetic  attitude  have 
begun  to  pall  upon  readers  who  demand  a  more  nervous 
and  accentuated  kind  of  writing.  It  is  felt  that  a  little 
roughness,  a  little  harshness,  even,  would  give  relief  to  his 
pictures  of  life.  There  is,  for  instance,  something  a  little 
irritating  in  the  old-fashioned  courtliness  of  his  manner 
toward  women ;  and  one  reads  with  a  certain  impatience 
smoothly  punctuated  passages  like  the  following:  "As 
the  vine,  which  has  long  twined  its  graceful  foliage  about  the 
oak,  and  been  lifted  by  it  into  sunshine,  will,  when  the 
hardy  plant  is  rifted  by  the  thunder-bolt,  cling  round  it 
With  its  caressing  tendrils,  and  bind  up  its  shattered 
boughs,  so  is  it  beautifully  ordered  by  Providence  that 
woman,  who  is  the  mere  dependent  and  ornament  of 
man  in  his  happier  hours,  should  be  his  stay  and  solace 
when  smitten  with  sudden  calamity,  winding  herself  into 
the  rugged  recesses  of  his  nature,  tenderly  supporting 


80  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

the  drooping  head  and  binding  up  the  broken  heart." 
Irving's  gifts  were  sentiment  and  humor,  with  an  imagi- 
nation sufficiently  fertile  and  an  observation  sufficiently 
acute  to  support  those  two  main  qualities,  but  inadequate 
to  the  service  of  strong  passion  or  subtle  thinking,  though 
his  pathos,  indeed,  sometimes  reached  intensity.  His 
humor  was  always  delicate  and  kindly  ;  his  sentiment 
never  degenerated  into  sentimentality.  His  diction  was 
graceful  and  elegant — too  elegant,  perhaps  ;  and,  in  his 
modesty,  he  attributed  the  success  of  his  books  in  England 
to  the  astonishment  of  Englishmen  that  an  American 
could  write  good  English. 

In  Spanish  history  and  legend  Irving  found  a  still  newer 
and  richer  field  for  his  fancy  to  work  upon.  He  had  not 
the  analytic  and  philosophical  mind  of  a  great  historian, 
and  the  merits  of  his  "  Conquest  of  Granada  "  and  "  Life 
of  Columbus  "  are  rather  belletristisch  than  scientific.  But 
he  brought  to  these  undertakings  the  same  eager  love  of 
the  romantic  past  which  had  determined  the  character  of 
his  writings  in  America  and  England,  and  the  result — 
whether  we  call  it  history  or  romance — is  at  all  events 
charming  as  literature.  His  "  Life  of  Washington  " — com- 
pleted in  1859 — was  his  magnum  opus,  and  is  accepted  as 
standard  authority.  "  Mahomet  and  His  Successors,"  1850, 
was  comparatively  a  failure.  But  of  all  Irving's  biogra- 
phies his  "Life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,"  1849,  was  the  most 
spontaneous  and  perhaps  the  best.  He  did  not  impose  it 
upon  himself  as  a  task,  but  wrote  it  from  a  native  and 
loving  sympathy  with  his  subject,  and  it  is,  therefore,  one 
of  the  choicest  literary  memoirs  in  the  language. 

When  Irving  returned  to  America,  in  1832,  he  was  the  re- 
cipient of  almost  national  honors.  He  had  received  the 
medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Literature  and  the  degree  of 
D.C.L.  from  Oxford  University,  and  had  made  American 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  81 

literature  known  and  respected  abroad.  In  his  modest 
home  at  Sunnyside,  on  the  banks  of  the  river  over  which 
he  had  been  the  first  to  throw  the  witchery  of  poetry  and 
romance,  he  was  attended  to  the  last  by  the  admiring 
affection  of  his  countrymen.  He  had  the  love  and  praises 
of  the  foremost  English  writers  of  his  own  generation  and 
the  generation  which  followed — of  Scott,  Byron,  Coleridge, 
Thackeray,  and  Dickens,  some  of  whom  had  been  among 
his  personal  friends.  He  is  not  the  greatest  of  American 
authors,  but  the  influence  of  his  writings  is  sweet  and 
wholesome,  and  it  is  in  many  ways  fortunate  that  the  first 
American  man  of  letters  who  made  himself  heard  in  Eu- 
rope should  have  been  in  all  particulars  a  gentleman. 

Connected  with  Irving,  at  least  by  name  and  locality, 
were  a  number  of  authors  who  resided  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  and  who  are  known  as  the  Knickerbocker  writers, 
perhaps  because  they  were  contributors  to  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine.  One  of  these  was  James  K.  Paulding,  a 
connection  of  Irving  by  marriage,  and  his  partner  in  the 
"Salmagundi  "  papers.  Paulding  became  secretary  of  the 
navy  under  Van  Buren,  and  lived  down  to  the  year  1860. 
He  was  a  voluminous  author,  but  his  writings  had  no 
power  of  continuance,  and  are  already  obsolete,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  his  novel,  "  The  Dutchman's  Fire- 
side," 1831. 

A  finer  spirit  than  Paulding  was  Joseph  Rodman  Drake, 
a  young  poet  of  great  promise,  who  died  in  1820,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-five.  Drake's  patriotic  lyric,  "  The  American 
Flag,"  is  certainly  the  most  spirited  thing  of  the  kind  in 
our  poetic  literature,  and  greatly  superior  to  such  national 
anthems  as  "Hail  Columbia"  and  "The  Star-Spangled 
Banner."  His  "  Culprit  Fay,';  published  in  1819,  was  the 
best  poem  that  had  yet  appeared  in  America,  if  we  except 
Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis,"  which  was  three  years  the  elder. 


82  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"  The  Culprit  Fay  "  was  a  fairy  story,  in  which,  following 
Irving's  lead,  Drake  undertook  to  throw  the  glamour  of 
poetry  about  the  Highlands  of  the  Hudson.  Edgar  Poe 
said  that  the  poem  was  fanciful  rather  than  imaginative  ; 
but  it  is  prettily  and  even  brilliantly  fanciful,  and  has  main- 
tained its  popularity  to  the  present  time.  Such  verse  as 
the  following— which  seems  to  show  that  Drake  had  been 
reading  Coleridge's  "  Christabel,"  published  three  years 
before — was  something  new  in  American  poetry  : 

"  The  winds  are  whist  and  the  owl  is  still, 

The  bat  in  the  shelvy  rock  is  hid, 
And  naught  is  heard  on  the  lonely  hill 
But  the  cricket's  chirp  and  the  answer  shrill 

Of  the  gauze-winged  katydid, 
And  the  plaint  of  the  wailing  whip-poor-will, 

Who  moans  unseen,  and  ceaseless  sings 
Ever  a  note  of  wail  and  woe, 

Till  morning  spreads  her  rosy  wings, 
And  earth  and  sky  in  her  glances  glow." 

Here  we  have,  at  last,  the  whip-poor-will,  an  American 
bird,  and  not  the  conventional  lark  or  nightingale,  al- 
though the  elves  of  the  Old  World  seem  scarcely  at  home 
on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson.  Drake's  memory  has  been 
kept  fresh  not  only  by  his  own  poetry,  but  by  the  beautiful 
elegy  written  by  his  friend  Fitz-Greene  Halleck,  the  first 
stanza  of  which  is  universally  known  : 

"  Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 

Friend  of  my  better  days ; 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

Halleck  was  born  in  Guilford,  Connecticut,  whither  he 
retired  in  1849,  and  resided  there  till  his  death  in  1867.  But 
his  literary  career  is  identified  with  New  York.  He  was 
associated  with  Drake  in  writing  the  "Croaker  Papers," 
a  series  of  humorous  and  satirical  verses  contributed  in 
1814  to  the  Evening  Post.  These  were  of  a  merely  local  and 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  83 

temporary  interest ;  but  Halleck's  fine  ode,  "  Marco  Boz- 
zaris  " — though  declaimed  until  it  has  become  hackneyed — 
gives  him  a  sure  title  to  remembrance  ;  and  his  "  Alnwick 
Castle,"  a  monody,  half  serious  and  half  playful,  on  the 
contrast  between  feudal  associations  and  modern  life,  has 
much  of  that  pensive  lightness  which  characterizes  Praed's 
best  vers  de  socicte. 

A  friend  of  Drake  and  Halleck  was  James  Fenimore 
Cooper  (1789-1851),  the  first  American  novelist  of  distinc- 
tion, and,  if  a  popularity  which  has  endured  for  nearly 
three  quarters  of  a  century  is  any  test,  still  the  most  suc- 
cessful of  all  American  novelists.  Cooper  was  far  more  in- 
tensely American  than  Irving,  and  his  books  reached  an 
even  wider  public.  "  They  are  published  as  soon  as  he  pro- 
duces them,"  said  Morse,  the  electrician,  in  1833,  "  in 
thirty-four  different  places  in  Europe.  They  have  been 
seen  by  American  travelers  in  the  languages  of  Turkey 
and  Persia,  in  Constantinople,  in  Egypt,  at  Jerusalem,  at 
Ispahan."  Cooper  wrote  altogether  too  much;  he  pub- 
lished, besides  his  fictions,  a  "  Naval  History  of  the  United 
States,"  a  series  of  naval  biographies,  works  of  travel,  and 
a  great  deal  of  controversial  matter.  He  wrote  over  thirty 
novels,  the  greater  part  of  which  are  little  better  than  trash, 
and  tedious  trash  at  that.  This  is  especially  true  of  his 
tendenz  novels  and  his  novels  of  society.  He  was  a  man  of 
strongly  marked  individuality,  fiery,  pugnacious,  sensitive 
to  criticism,  and  abounding  in  prejudices.  He  was  embit- 
tered by  the  scurrilous  attacks  made  upon  him  by  a  portion 
of  the  American  press,  and  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  and 
energy  in  conducting  libel  suits  against  the  newspapers. 
In  the  same  spirit  he  used  fiction  as  a  vehicle  for  attack 
upon  the  abuses  and  follies  of  American  life.  Nearly  all  of 
his  novels  written  with  this  design  are  worthless.  Nor 
was  Cooper  well  equipped  by  nature  and  temperament  for 


84  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

depicting  character  and  passion  in  social  life.  Even  in  his 
best  romances  his  heroines  and  his  "leading  juveniles" — 
to  borrow  a  term  from  the  amateur  stage— are  insipid  and 
conventional.  He  was  no  satirist,  and  his  humor  was  not 
of  a  high  order.  He  was  a  rapid  and  uneven  writer,  and, 
unlike  Irving,  he  had  no  style. 

Where  Cooper  was  great  was  in  the  story,  in  the  inven- 
tion of  incidents  and  plots,  in  a  power  of  narrative  and  de- 
scription in  tales  of  wild  adventure  which  keeps  the  reader 
in  breathless  excitement  to  the  end  of  the  book.  He  orig- 
inated the  novel  of  the  sea  and  the  novel  of  the  wilderness. 
He  created  the  Indian  of  literature,  and  in  this,  his  peculiar 
field,  although  he  has  had  countless  imitators,  he  has  had 
no  equals.  Cooper's  experiences  had  prepared  him  well  for 
the  kingship  of  this  new  realm  in  the  world  of  fiction. 
His  childhood  was  passed  on  the  borders  of  Otsego  Lake, 
when  central  New  York  was  still  a  wilderness,  with  bound- 
less forests  stretching  westward,  broken  only  here  and  there 
by  the  clearings  of  the  pioneers.  He  was  taken  from  col- 
lege (Yale)  when  still  a  lad,  and  sent  to  sea  in  a  merchant 
vessel,  before  the  mast.  Afterward  he  entered  the  navy 
and  did  duty  on  the  high  seas  and  upon  Lake  Ontario, 
then  surrounded  by  virgin  forests.  He  married  and  re- 
signed his  commission  in  1811,  just  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  with  England,  so  that  he  missed  the  opportunity 
of  seeing  active  service  in  any  of  those  engagements  on  the 
ocean  and  our  great  lakes  which  were  so  glorious  to 
American  arms.  But  he  always  retained  an  active  interest 
in  naval  affairs. 

His  first  successful  novel  was  "  The  Spy,"  1821,  a  tale  of 
the  Revolutionary  War,  the  scene  of  which  was  laid  in 
Westchester  County,  N.  Y.,  where  the  author  was  then  re- 
siding. The  hero  of  this  story,  Harvey  Birch,  was  one  of  the 
most  skilfully  drawn  figures  on  his  canvas.  In  1823  he  pub- 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  85 

lished  "The  Pioneers,"  a  work  somewhat  overladen  with 
description,  in  which  he  drew  for  material  upon  his  boyish 
recollections  of  frontier  life  at  Cooperstown.  This  was  the 
first  of  a  series  of  five  romances  known  as  the  "  Leather- 
stocking  Tales."  The  others  were  "The  Last  of  the 
Mohicans,"  1826  ;  "The  Prairie,"  1827  ;  "  The  Pathfinder," 
1840  ;  and  "  The  Deerslayer,"  1841.  The  hero  of  this  series, 
Natty  Bumpo,  or  "  Leatherstocking,"  was  Cooper's  one 
great  creation  in  the  sphere  of  character,  his  most  original 
addition  to  the  literature  of  the  world  in  the  way  of  a  new 
human  type.  This  backwoods  philosopher — to  the  concep- 
tion of  whom  the  historic  exploits  of  Daniel  Boone  perhaps 
supplied  some  hints  ;  unschooled,  but  moved  by  noble  im- 
pulses and  a  natural  sense  of  piety  and  justice  ;  passion- 
ately attached  to  the  wilderness,  and  following  its  westering 
edge  even  unto  the  prairies — this  man  of  the  woods  was  the 
first  real  American  in  fiction.  Hardly  less  individual  and 
vital  were  the  various  types  of  Indian  character,  in 
Chingachgook,  Uncas,  Hist,  and  the  Huron  warriors.  In- 
ferior to  these,  but  still  vigorously  though  somewhat 
roughly  drawn,  were  the  waifs  and  strays  of  civilization, 
whom  duty,  or  the  hope  of  gain,  or  the  love  of  adventure, 
or  the  outlawry  of  crime  had  driven  to  the  wilderness — the 
solitary  trapper,  the  reckless  young  frontiersman,  the  offi- 
cers and  men  of  outpost  garrisons.  Whether  Cooper's  In- 
dian was  the  real  being,  or  an  idealized  and  rather  melo- 
dramatic version  of  the  truth,  has  been  a  subject  of  dispute. 
However  this  be,  he  has  taken  his  place  in  the  domain  of 
art,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  his  standing  there  is  secure. 
]S"o  boy  will  ever  give  him  up. 

Equally  good  with  the  "Leatherstocking"  novels,  and 
equally  national,  were  Cooper's  tales  of  the  sea,  or  at  least 
the  best  two  of  them— "The  Pilot,"  1823,  founded  upon  the 
daring  exploits  of  John  Paul  Jones,  and  "  The  Red  Rover," 


86  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

1828.  But  here,  though  Cooper  still  holds  the  sea,  he  has  had 
to  admit  competitors  ;  and  Britannia,  who  rules  the  waves 
in  song,  has  put  in  some  claim  to  a  share  in  the  domain  of 
nautical  fiction  in  the  persons  of  Mr.  W.  Clark  Russell  and 
others.  Though  Cooper's  novels  do  not  meet  the  deeper 
needs  of  the  heart  and  the  imagination,  their  appeal  to  the 
universal  love  of  a  story  is  perennial.  We  devour  them 
when  we  are  boys,  and  if  we  do  not  often  return  to  them 
when  we  are  men,  that  is  perhaps  only  because  we  have 
read  them  before,  and  "  know  the  ending."  They  are  good 
yarns  for  the  forecastle  and  the  camp-fire  ;  and  the  scholar 
in  his  study,  though  he  may  put  "  The  Deerslayer  "  or  "  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans  "  away  on  the  top  shelf,  will  take  it 
down  now  and  again,  and  sit  up  half  the  night  over  it. 

Before  dismissing  the  belles-lettres  writings  of  this  period, 
mention  should  be  made  of  a  few  poems  of  the  fugitive 
kind  which  seem  to  have  taken  a  permanent  place  in  pop- 
ular regard.  John  Howard  Payne,  a  native  of  Long  Island, 
a  wandering  actor  and  playwright,  who  died  American 
consul  at  Tunis  in  1852,  wrote  about  1820  for  Covent  Gar- 
den Theater  an  opera,  entitled  "  Clari,"  the  libretto  of 
which  included  the  now  famous  song  of  "  Home,  Sweet 
Home."  Its  literary  pretensions  were  of  the  humblest 
kind,  but  it  spoke  a  true  word  which  touched  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  heart  in  its  tenderest  spot,  and,  being  happily 
married  to  a  plaintive  air,  was  sold  by  the  hundred  thou- 
sand, and  is  evidently  destined  to  be  sung  forever.  A  like 
success  has  attended  "The  Old  Oaken  Bucket,"  composed 
by  Samuel  Wood  worth,  a  printer  and  journalist  from  Massa- 
chusetts, whose  other  poems,  of  which  two  collections  were 
issued  in  1818  and  1826,  were  soon  forgotten.  Richard 
Henry  Wilde,  an  Irishman  by  birth,  a  gentleman  of  schol- 
arly tastes  and  accomplishments,  who  wrote  a  great  deal  on 
Italian  literature,  and  sat  for  several  terms  in  Congress  as 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  87 

i 

representative  of  the  state  of  Georgia,  was  the  author  of  the 
favorite  song,  "  My  Life  is  Like  the  Summer  Rose."  An- 
other southerner,  and  a  member  of  a  distinguished  south- 
ern family,  was  Edward  Coate  Pinkney,  who  served  nine 
years  in  the  navy,  and  died  in  1828  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
six,  having  published  in  1825  a  small  volume  of  lyrical 
poems  which  had  a  fire  and  a  grace  uncommon  at  that 
time  in  American  verse.  One  of  these,  "A  Health,"  be- 
ginning : 

"  I  fill  this  cup  to  one  made  up  of  loveliness  alone," 

though  perhaps  somewhat  overpraised  by  Edgar  Poe,  has 
rare  beauty  of  thought  and  expression. 

John  Quincy  Adams,  sixth  president  of  the  United 
States  (1825-29),  was  a  man  of  culture  and  literary  tastes. 
He  published  his  lectures  on  rhetoric,  delivered  during  his 
tenure  of  the  Boylston  Professorship  at  Harvard  in  1806-9  ; 
he  left  a  voluminous  diary,  which  has  been  edited  since 
his  death  in  1848  ;  and  among  his  experiments  in  poetry  is 
one  of  considerable  merit,  entitled  "The  Wants  of  Man," 
an  ironical  sermon  on  Goldsmith's  text : 

4 '  Man  wants  but  little  here  below, 
Xor  wants  that  little  long." 

As  this  poem  is  a  curiously  close  anticipation  of  Dr. 
Holmes's  "Contentment,"  so  the  very  popular  ballad,  "Old 
Grimes,"  written  about  1818  by  Albert  Gorton  Greene,  an 
undergraduate  of  Brown  University  in  Rhode  Island,  is  in 
some  respects  an  anticipation  of  Holmes's  quaintly  pathetic 
".Last  Leaf." 

The  political  literature  and  public  oratory  of  the  United 
States  during  this  period,  although  not  absolutely  of  less 
importance  than  that  which  preceded  and  followed  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  adoption  of  the  con- 
stitution, demands  less  relative  attention  in  a  history  of 


Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters, 


literature  by  reason  of  the  growth  of  other  departments  of 
thought.  The  age  was  a  political  one,  but  no  longer  exclu- 
sively political.  The  debates  of  the  time  centered  about 
the  question  of  "State  Rights,"  and  the  main  forum  of 
discussion  was  the  old  Senate  chamber,  then  made  illus- 
trious by  the  presence  of  Clay,  Webster,  and  Calhoun. 
The  slavery  question,  which  had  threatened  trouble,  was 
put  off  for  a  while  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820, 
only  to  break  out  more  fiercely  in  the  debates  on  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  and  the  Kansas  and  Nebraska  Bill. 
Meanwhile  the  abolition  movement  had  been  transferred 
to  the  press  and  the  platform.  Garrison  started  his 
Liberator  in  1830,  and  the  Antislavery  Society  was  founded 
in  1833.  The  Whig  party,  which  had  inherited  the  consti- 
tutional principles  of  the  old  Federal  party,  advocated 
internal  improvements  at  national  expense  and  a  high 
protective  tariff.  The  State  Eights  party,  which  was 
strongest  at  the  South,  opposed  those  views,  and  in  1832 
South  Carolina  claimed  the  right  to  "nullify"  the  tariff 
imposed  by  the  general  government.  The  leader  of  this 
party  was  John  Caldwell  Calhoun,  a  South  Carolinian, 
who  in  his  speech  in  the  United  States  Senate,  on 
February  13,  1832,  on  Nullification  and  the  Force  Bill,  set 
forth  most  authoritatively  the  "Carolina  doctrine."  Cal- 
houn was  a  great  debater,  but  hardly  a  great  orator.  His 
speeches  are  the  arguments  of  a  lawyer  and  a  strict  consti- 
tutionalist, severely  logical,  and  with  a  sincere  conviction 
in  the  soundness  of  his  case.  Their  language  is  free  from 
bad  rhetoric ;  the  reasoning  is  cogent,  but  there  is  an 
absence  of  emotion  and  imagination  ;  they  contain  few 
quotable  things,  and  no  passages  of  commanding  elo- 
quence, such  as  strew  the  orations  of  Webster  and  Burke. 
They  are  not,  in  short,  literature.  Again,  the  speeches  of 
Henry  Clay,  of  Kentucky,  the  leader  of  the  Whigs,  whose 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  89 

persuasive  oratory  is  a  matter  of  tradition,  disappoint  in 
the  reading.     The  fire  has  gone  out  of  them. 

Not  so  with  Daniel  Webster,  the  greatest  of  American 
forensic  orators,  if,  indeed,  he  be  not  the  greatest  of  all 
orators  who  have  used  the  English  tongue.  Webster's 
speeches  are  of  the  kind  that  have  power  to  move  after  the 
voice  of  the  speaker  is  still.  The  thought  and  the  passion 
in  them  lay  hold  on  feelings  of  patriotism  more  lasting 
than  the  issues  of  the  moment.  It  is,  indeed,  true  of  Web- 
ster's speeches,  as  of  all  speeches,  that  they  are  known  to 
posterity  more  by  single  brilliant  passages  than  as  wholes. 
In  oratory  the  occasion  is  of  the  essence  of  the  thing,  and 
only  those  parts  of  an  address  which  are  permanent  and 
universal  in  their  appeal  take  their  place  in  literature. 
But  of  such  detachable  passages  there  are  happily  many  in 
Webster's  orations.  One  great  thought  underlay  all  his 
public  life,  the  thought  of  the  Union — of  American  nation- 
ality. What  in  Hamilton  had  been  a  principle  of  political 
philosophy  had  become  in  Webster  a  passionate  conviction. 
The  Union  -  was  his  idol,  and  he  was  intolerant  of  any 
faction  which  threatened  it  from  any  quarter,  whether  the 
nullifiers  of  South  Carolina  or  the  abolitionists  of  the 
North.  It  is  this  thought  which  gives  grandeur  and  ele- 
vation to  all  his  utterances,  and  especially  to  the  wonderful 
peroration  of  his  "  Reply  to  Hayne,"  on  Mr.  Foot's  reso- 
lution touching  the  sale  of  the  public  lands,  delivered  in 
the  Senate  on  January  26,  1830,  whose  closing  words,  "  Lib- 
erty and  union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable," 
became  the  rallying  cry  of  a  great  cause.  Similar  in  senti- 
ment was  his  famous  speech  of  March  7,  1850,  "  On  the 
Constitution  and  the  Union,"  which  gave  so  much  offense 
to  the  extreme  Antislavery  party,  who  held  with  Garrison 
that  a  constitution  which  protected  slavery  was  "  a  league 
with  death  and  a  covenant  with  hell."  It  is  not  claiming  too 


90  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

much  for  Webster  to  assert  that  the  sentences  of  these  and 
other  speeches,  memorized  and  declaimed  by  thousands  of 
schoolboys  throughout  the  North,  did  as  much  as  any 
single  influence  to  train  up  a  generation  in  hatred  of  seces- 
sion, and  to  send  into  the  fields  of  the  Civil  War  armies  of 
men  animated  with  the  stern  resolution  to  fight  until  the 
last  drop  of  blood  was  shed,  rather  than  allow  the  Union  to 
be  dissolved. 

The  figure  of  this  great  senator  is  one  of  the  most  impos- 
ing in  American  annals.  The  masculine  force  of  his  per- 
sonality impressed  itself  upon  men  of  widely  differing 
natures — upon  the  unworldly  Emerson,  and  upon  the  cap- 
tious Carlyle,  whose  respect  was  not  willingly  accorded  to 
any  contemporary,  much  less  to  a  representative  of  Ameri- 
can democracy.  Webster's  looks  and  manner  were  charac- 
teristic. His  form  was  massive,  his  skull  and  jaw  solid,  the 
under-lip  projecting,  and  the  mouth  firmly  and  grimly 
shut ;  his  complexion  was  swarthy,  and  his  black,  deep-set 
eyes,  under  shaggy  brows,  glowed  with  a  smoldering  fire. 
He  was  rather  silent  in  society  ;  his  delivery  in  debate  was 
grave  and  weighty,  rather  than  fervid.  His  oratory  was 
massive,  and  sometimes  even  ponderous.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  an  American  orator  of  to-day,  with  intel- 
lectual abilities  equal  to  Webster's — if  such  a  one  there 
were — would  permit  himself  the  use  of  sonorous  and  elabo- 
rate pictures  like  the  famous  period  which  follows:  "On 
this  question  of  principle,  while  actual  suffering  was  yet 
afar  off,  they  raised  their  flag  against  a  power  to  which,  for 
purposes  of  foreign  conquest  and  subjugation,  Rome,  in  the 
height  of  her  glory,  is  not  to  be  compared— a  power  which 
has  dotted  over  the  surface  of  the  whole  globe  with  her 
possessions  and  military  posts,  whose  morning  drum-beat, 
following  the  sun  and  keeping  company  with  the  hours, 
circles  the  earth  with  one  continuous  and  unbroken  strain 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  91 

of  the  martial  airs  of  England."  The  secret  of  this  kind 
of  oratory  has  been  lost.  The  present  generation  distrusts 
rhetorical  ornament  and  likes  something  swifter,  simpler, 
and  more  familiar  in  its  speakers.  But  everything  in  dec- 
lamation of  the  sort,  depends  upon  the  way  in  which  it  is 
done.  Webster  did  it  supremely  well ;  a  smaller  man 
would  merely  have  made  buncombe  of  it. 

Among  the  legal  orators  of  the  time  the  foremost  was 
Eufus  Choate,  an  eloquent  pleader,  and,  like  Webster,  a 
United  States  senator  from  Massachusetts.  Some  of  his 
speeches,  though  excessively  rhetorical,  have  literary  qual- 
ity, and  are  nearly  as  effective  in  print  as  Webster's  own. 
Another  Massachusetts  orator,  Edward  Everett,  who  in  his 
time  was  successively  professor  in  Harvard  College,  Uni- 
tarian minister  in  Boston,  editor  of  the  North  American 
Reviciv,  member  of  both  houses  of  Congress,  minister  to 
England,  governor  of  his  state,  and  president  of  Harvard, 
was  a  speaker  of  great  finish  and  elegance.  His  addresses 
were  mainly  of  the  memorial  and  anniversary  kind,  and 
were  rather  lectures  and  Phi  Beta  Kappa  prolusions  than 
speeches.  Everett  was  an  instance  of  careful  culture  be- 
stowed on  a  soil  of  no  very  great  natural  richness.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  his  classical  orations  on  Washington,  the 
Republic,  Bunker  Hill  Monument,  and  kindred  themes, 
have  enough  of  the  breath  of  life  in  them  to  preserve  them 
much  longer  in  recollection. 

New  England,  during  these  years,  did  not  take  that  lead- 
ing part  in  the  purely  literary  development  of  the  country 
which  it  afterward  assumed.  It  had  no  names  to  match 
against  those  of  Irving  and  Cooper.  Drake  and  Halleck — 
slender  as  was  their  performance  in  point  of  quantity — 
were  better  poets  than  the  Boston  bards,  Charles  Sprague, 
whose  "  Shakespeare  Ode,"  delivered  at  the  Boston  theater 
in  1823,  was  locally  famous ;  and  Richard  Henry  Dana, 


92  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

whose  longish  narrative  poem  "  The  Buccaneer,"  1827,  once 
had  admirers.  But  Boston  has  at  no  time  been  without  a 
serious  intellectual  life  of  its  own,  nor  without  a  circle  of 
highly  educated  men  of  literary  pursuits,  even  in  default 
of  great  geniuses.  The  North  American  Review,  estab- 
lished in  1815,  though  it  has  been  wittily  described  as 
"ponderously  revolving  through  space"  for  a  few  years 
after  its  foundation,  did  not  exist  in  an  absolute  vacuum, 
but  was  scholarly,  if  somewhat  heavy.  Webster,  to  be 
sure,  was  a  Massachusetts  man — as  were  Everett  and 
Choate — but  his  triumphs  were  won  in  the  wider  field  of 
national  politics.  There  was,  however,  a  movement  at 
this  time,  in  the  intellectual  life  of  Boston  and  eastern 
Massachusetts,  which,  though  not  immediately  contribu- 
tory to  the  finer  kinds  of  literature,  prepared  the  way,  by 
its  clarifying  and  stimulating  influences,  for  the  eminent 
writers  of  the  next  generation.  This  was  the  Unitarian 
revolt  against  Puritan  orthodoxy,  in  which  William  Ellery 
Channing  was  the  principal  leader.  In  a  community  so 
intensely  theological  as  New  England,  it  was  natural 
that  any  new  movement  in  thought  should  find  its  point 
of  departure  in  the  churches.  Accordingly,  the  progress- 
ive and  democratic  spirit  of  the  age,  which  in  other  parts 
of  the  country  took  other  shapes,  assumed  in  Massachu- 
setts the  form  of  "liberal  Christianity."  Arminianism, 
Socinianism,  and  other  phases  of  anti-Trinitarian  doctrine 
had  been  latent  in  some  of  the  Congregational  churches  of 
Massachusetts  for  a  number  of  years.  But  about  1812  the 
heresy  broke  out  openly,  and  within  a  few  years  from  that 
date  most  of  the  oldest  and  wealthiest  church  societies  of 
Boston  and  its  vicinity  had  gone  over  to  Unitarianism,  and 
Harvard  College  had  been  captured,  too.  In  the  contro- 
versy that  ensued,  and  which  was  carried  on  in  numer- 
ous books,  pamphlets,  sermons,  and  periodicals,  there  were 


The  Era  of  National  Expansion.  93 

eminent  disputants  on  both  sides.  So  far  as  this  contro- 
versy was  concerned  with  the  theological  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  it  has  no  place  in  a  history  of  literature.  But  the 
issue  went  far  beyond  that.  Charming  asserted  the  dignity 
of  human  nature  against  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  innate 
depravity,  and  affirmed  the  rights  of  human  reason  and 
man's  capacity  to  judge  of  God.  "We  must  start  in  re- 
ligion from  our  own  souls,"  he  said.  And  in  his  "  Moral 
Argument  Against  Calvinism,"  1820,  he  wrote  :  "Nothing 
is  gained  to  piety  by  degrading  human  nature,  for  in  the 
competency  of  this  nature  to  know  and  judge  of  God  all 
piety  has  its  foundation."  In  opposition  to  Edwards's  doc- 
trine of  necessity  he  emphasized  the  freedom  of  the  will. 
He  maintained  that  the  Calvinistic  dogmas  of  original  sin, 
foreordination,  election  by  grace,  and  eternal  punishment 
were  inconsistent  with  the  divine  perfection,  and  made  God 
a  monster.  In  Channing's  view  the  great  sanction  of  relig- 
ious truth  is  the  moral  sanction,  is  its  agreement  with  the 
laws  of  conscience.  He  was  a  passionate  vindicator  of  the 
liberty  of  the  individual,  not  only  as  against  political  oppres- 
sion, but  against  the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  over  thought 
and  conscience  :  "  We  were  made  for  free  action.  This  alone 
is  life,  and  enters  into  all  that  is  good  and  great."  This 
jealous  love  of  freedom  inspired  all  that  he  did  and  wrote. 
It  led  him  to  join  the  Antislavery  party.  It  expressed 
itself  in  his  elaborate  arraignment  of  Napoleon  in  the  Uni- 
tarian organ,  the  Christian  Examiner,  for  1827-28 ;  in  his 
"Remarks  on  Associations,"  and  his  paper  "On  the  Char- 
acter and  Writings  of  John  Milton,"  1826.  This  was  his 
most  considerable  contribution  to  literary  criticism.  It 
took  for  a  text  Milton's  recently  discovered  "Treatise  on 
Christian  Doctrine" — the  tendency  of  which  was  anti- 
Trinitarian — but  it  began  with  a  general  defense  of  poetry 
against  "  those  who  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  poetry  as 


94  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

light  reading."  This  would  now  seem  a  somewhat  super- 
fluous introduction  to  an  article  in  any  American  review. 
But  it  shows  the  nature  of  the  milieu  through  which  the 
liberal  movement  in  Boston  had  to  make  its  way.  To  re- 
assert the  dignity  and  usefulness  of  the  beautiful  arts,  was, 
perhaps,  the  chief  service  which  the  Massachusetts  Uni- 
tarians rendered  to  humanism.  The  traditional  prejudice 
of  the  Puritans  against  the  ornamental  side  of  life  had  to 
be  softened  before  polite  literature  could  find  a  congenial 
atmosphere  in  New  England.  In  Channing's  "  Remarks  on 
National  Literature,"  reviewing  a  work  published  in  1823, 
he  asks  the  question,  "  Do  we  possess  what  may  be  called  a 
national  literature?"  and  answers  it,  by  implication  at 
least,  in  the  negative.  That  we  do  now  possess  a  national 
literature  is  in  great  part  due  to  the  influence  of  Channing 
and  his  associates,  although  his  own  writings,  being  in  the 
main  controversial,  and  of  temporary  interest,  may  not  take 
rank  among  the  permanent  treasures  of  that  literature. 

1.  WASHINGTON  IRVING  :     "  Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New,  York";    "The    Sketch    Book";     "  Bracebridge 
Hall  "  ;  "Tales  of  a  Traveler  "  ;  "  The  Alhambra  "  ;  "  Life 
of  Oliver  Goldsmith." 

2.  JAMES   FENIMOBB   COOPER:     "The   Spy";    "The 
Pilot"  ;  "  The  Red  Rover  "  ;  "  The  Leatherstocking  Tales." 

3.  DANIEL  WEBSTER  :   "  Great  Speeches  and  Orations." 

4.  WILLIAM   ELLERY    CHANNING:     "The    Character 
and  Writings  of  John  Milton  "  ;  "  The  Life  and  Character 
of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  "  ;  "  Slavery."     [Vols.  I.  and  II.  of 
the  "Works  of  William  E.  Channing."     Boston  :  1841.] 

5.  JOSEPH  RODMAN  DRAKE  :  "  The  Culprit  Fay  "  ;  "  The 
American  Flag."     ["  Selected  Poems."    New  York  :  1835.] 

6.  FITZ-GREENE  HALLECK  :  "  Marco  Bozzaris  ";  "Aln- 
wick  Castle";   "On  the  Death  of   Drake."      ["Poems." 
New  York :  1827.] 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  CONCORD  WRITERS  —1837-1861. 

THERE  has  been  but  one  movement  in  the  history  of  the 
American  mind  which  has  given  to  literature  a  group  of 
writers  having  coherence  enough  to  merit  the  name  of  a 
school.  This  was  the  great  humanitarian  movement,  or 
series  of  movements,  in  New  England,  which,  beginning 
in  the  Unitarianism  of  Channing,  ran  through  its  later 
phase  in  transcendentalism,  and  spent  its  last  strength  in 
the  antislavery  agitation  and  the  enthusiasms  of  the  Civil 
War.  The  second  stage  of  this  intellectual  and  social  revolt 
was  transcendentalism,  of  which  Emerson  wrote  in  1842 : 
"  The  history  of  genius  and  of  religion  in  these  times  will 
be  the  history  of  this  tendency."  It  culminated  about 
1840-41  in  the  establishment  of  The  Dial  and  the  Brook 
Farm  Community,  although  Emerson  had  given  the  signal 
a  few  years  before  in  his  little  volume  entitled  "Nature," 
1836,  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  at  Harvard  on  "The 
American  Scholar,"  1837,  and  his  address  in  1838  before  the 
Divinity  School  at  Cambridge.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
(1803-82)  was  the  prophet  of  the  sect,  and  Concord  was  its 
Mecca  ;  but  the  influence  of  the  new  ideas  was  not  confined 
to  the  little  group  of  professed  transcendentalists ;  it  ex- 
tended to  all  the  young  writers  within  reach,  who  struck 
their  roots  deeper  into  the  soil  that  it  had  loosened  and 
freshened.  We  owe  to  it,  in  great  measure,  not  merely  Em- 
erson, Alcott,  Margaret  Fuller,  and  Thoreau,  but  Haw- 
thorne, Lowell,  Whittier,  and  Holmes. 

95 


96  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

In  its  strictest  sense  transcendentalism  was  a  restate- 
ment of  the  idealistic  philosophy,  and  an  application  of  its 
beliefs  to  religion,  nature,  and  life.  But  in  a  looser  sense, 
and  as  including  the  more  outward  manifestations  which 
drew  popular  attention  the  most  strongly,  it  was  the  name 
given  to  that  spirit  of  dissent  and  protest,  of  universal  in- 
quiry and  experiment,  which  marked  the  third  and  fourth 
decades  of  this  century  in  America,  and  especially  in  New 
England.  The  movement  was  contemporary  with  polit- 
ical revolutions  in  Europe  and  with  the  preaching  of  many 
novel  gospels  in  religion,  in  sociology,  in  science,  education, 
medicine,  and  hygiene.  New  sects  were  formed,  like  the 
Swedenborgians,  Universalists,  Spiritualists,  Millerites, 
Second  Adventists,  Shakers,  Mormons,  and  Gome-outers, 
some  of  whom  believed  in  trances,  miracles,  and  direct  rev- 
elations from  the  divine  Spirit ;  others  in  the  quick  coming 
of  Christ,  as  deduced  from  the  opening  of  the  seals  and 
the  number  of  the  beasts  in  the  Apocalypse  ;  and  still  others 
in  the  reorganization  of  society  and  of  the  family  on  a  dif- 
ferent basis.  New  systems  of  education  were  tried,  sug- 
gested by  the  writings  of  the  Swiss  reformer,  Pestalozzi, 
and  others.  The  pseudo-sciences  of  mesmerism  and  of  phre- 
nology, as  taught  by  Gall  and  Spurzheim,  had  numerous 
followers.  In  medicine,  homeopathy,  hydropathy,  and 
what  Dr.  Holmes  calls  "kindred  delusions,"  made  many 
disciples.  Numbers  of  persons,  influenced  by  the  doctrines 
of  Graham  and  other  vegetarians,  abjured  the  use  of  animal 
food,  as  injurious  not  only  to  health  but  to  a  finer  spiritu- 
ality. Not  a  few  refused  to  vote  or  pay  taxes.  The  writ- 
ings of  Fourier  and  Saint-Simon  were  translated,  and  so- 
cieties were  established  where  cooperation  and  a  community 
of  goods  should  take  the  place  of  selfish  competition. 

About  the  year  1840  there  were  some  thirty  of  these 
"phalansteries"  in  America,  many  of  which  had  their 


The  Concord  Writers.  97 

organs  in  the  shape  of  weekly  or  monthly  journals,  which 
advocated  the  principle  of  association.  The  best  known  of 
these  was  probably  The  Harbinger,  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
famous  Brook  Farm  Community,  which  was  founded  at 
West  Roxbury,  Mass.,  in  1841,  and  lasted  till  1847.  The 
head  man  of  Brook  Farm  was  George  Ripley,  a  Unitarian 
clergyman,  who  had  resigned  his  pulpit  in  Boston  to  go 
into  the  movement,  and  who  after  its  failure  became  and 
remained  for  many  years  literary  editor  of  the  New  York 
Tribune.  Among  his  associates  were  Charles  A.  Dana — 
now  the  editor  of  The  Sun — Margaret  Fuller,  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  and  others  not  unknown  to  fame.  The  Har- 
binger, which  ran  from  1845  to  1849 — two  years  after  the 
break-up  of  the  community,  had  among  its  contributors 
many  who  were  not  Brook  Farmers,  but  who  sympathized 
more  or  less  with  the  experiment.  Of  the  number  were 
Horace  Greeley,  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge,  who  did  so  much  to  in- 
troduce American  readers  to  German  literature,  J.  S. 
Dwight,  the  musical  critic,  C.  P.  Cranch,  the  poet,  and 
younger  men,  like  G.  "W.  Curtis  and  T.  W.  Higginson.  A 
reader  of  to-day,  looking  into  an  odd  volume  of  The  Har- 
binger, will  find  in  it  some  stimulating  writing,  together 
with  a  great  deal  of  unintelligible  talk  about  "  harmonic 
unity,"  "love  germination,"  and  other  matters  now  fallen 
silent. 

The  most  important  literary  result  of  this  experiment 
at  "  plain  living  and  high  thinking,"  with  its  queer 
mixture  of  culture  and  agriculture,  was  Hawthorne's 
"  Blithedale  Romance,"  which  has  for  its  background  an 
idealized  picture  of  the  community  life  ;  whose  heroine, 
Zenobia,  has  touches  of  Margaret  Fuller,  and  whose  hero, 
with  his  hobby  of  prison  reform,  was  a  type  of  the  one- 
idea'd  philanthropist  that  abounded  in  such  an  environ- 
ment. Hawthorne's  attitude  was  always  in  part  one  of 


98  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

reserve  and  criticism,  an  attitude  which  is  apparent  in  the 
reminiscences  of  Brook  Farm  in  his  "American  Note 
Books,"  wherein  he  speaks  with  a  certain  resentment  of 
"  Miss  Fuller's  transcendental  heifer,"  which  hooked  the 
other  cows,  and  was  evidently  to  Hawthorne's  mind  not 
unsymbolic  in  this  respect  of  Miss  Fuller  herself. 

It  was  the  day  of  seers  and  "Orphic"  utterances;  the 
air  was  full  of  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity  and  thick  with 
philanthropic  projects  and  plans  for  the  regeneration  of  the 
universe.  The  figure  of  the  wild-eyed,  long-haired  re- 
former—the man  with  a  panacea— the  "  crank  "  of  our  later 
terminology — became  a  familiar  one.  He  abounded  at  non- 
resistance  conventions  and  meetings  of  universal  peace 
societies  and  of  woman's  rights  associations.  The  move- 
ment had  its  grotesque  aspects,  which  Lowell  has  described 
in  his  essay  on  Thoreau.  "  Bran  had  its  apostles  and  the 
pre-sartorial  simplicity  of  Adam  its  martyrs,  tailored  im- 
promptu from  the  tar-pot.  .  .  .  Not  a  few  impecunious 
zealots  abjured  the  use  of  money  (unless  earned  by  other 
people),  professing  to  live  on  the  internal  revenues  of  the 
spirit.  .  .  .  Communities  were  established  where  every- 
thing was  to  be  common  but  common  sense." 

This  ferment  has  long  since  subsided,  and  much  of  what 
was  then  seething  has  gone  off  in  vapor  or  other  volatile 
products.  But  some  very  solid  matters  have  also  been  pre- 
cipitated, some  crystals  of  poetry,  translucent,  symmetrical, 
enduring.  The  immediate  practical  outcome  was  disap- 
pointing, and  the  external  history  of  the  agitation  is  a  rec- 
ord of  failed  experiments,  spurious  sciences,  Utopian  phi- 
losophies, and  sects  founded  only  to  dwindle  away  or  to  be 
reabsorbed  into  some  form  of  orthodoxy.  In  the  eyes  of 
the  conservative,  or  the  worldly-minded,  or  of  the  plain 
people  who  could  not  understand  the  enigmatic  utterances 
of  the  reformers,  the  dangerous  or  ludicrous  sides  of  tran- 


The  Concord  Writers.  99 

scendentalism  were  naturally  uppermost.  Nevertheless  the 
movement  was  but  a  new  avatar  of  the  old  Puritan  spirit ; 
its  moral  earnestness,  its  spirituality,  its  tenderness  for  the 
individual  conscience.  Puritanism,  too,  in  its  day  had  run 
into  grotesque  extremes.  Emerson  bore  about  the  same 
relation  to  the  absurder  outcroppings  of  transcendentalism 
that  Milton  bore  to  the  New  Lights,  Ranters,  Fifth  Mon- 
archy Men,  etc. ,  of  his  time.  There  is  in  him  that  ming- 
ling of  idealism,  with  an  abiding  sanity,  and  even  a  Yankee 
shrewdness,  which  characterizes  the  race.  The  practical, 
inventive,  calculating,  money-getting  side  of  the  Yankee 
has  been  made  sufficiently  obvious.  But  the  deep  heart  of 
New  England  is  full  of  dreams,  mysticism,  romance  : 

"And  in  the  day  of  sacrifice, 

When  heroes  piled  the  pyre, 
The  dismal  Massachusetts  ice 
Burned  more  than  others'  fire." 

The  one  element  which  the  odd  and  eccentric  develop- 
ments of  this  movement  shared  in  common  with  the  real 
philosophy  of  transcendentalism  was  the  rejection  of 
authority  and  the  appeal  to  the  private  consciousness  as  the 
sole  standard  of  truth  and  right.  This  principle  certainly 
lay  in  the  ethical  systems  of  Kant  and  Fichte,  the  great 
transcendentalists  of  Germany.  It  had  been  strongly 
asserted  by  Channing.  Nay,  it  was  the  starting-point  of 
puritanism  itself,  which  had  drawn  away  from  the  cere- 
monial religion  of  the  English  Church,  and  by  its  Congre- 
gational system  had  made  each  church  society  independent 
in  doctrine  and  worship.  And  although  Puritan  ortho- 
doxy in  New  England  had  grown  rigid  and  dogmatic  it  had 
never  used  the  weapons  of  obscurantism.  By  encouraging 
education  to  the  utmost,  it  had  shown  its  willingness  to 
submit  its  beliefs  to  the  fullest  discussion  and  had  put  into 
the  hands  of  dissent  the  means  with  which  to  attack  them. 


100  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

In  its  theological  aspect  transcendentalism  was  a  depart- 
ure from  conservative  Unitarianism,  as  that  had  been  from 
Calvinism.  From  Edwards  to  Channing,  from  Channing 
to  Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker,  there  was  a  natural  and 
logical  unfolding  ;  not  logical  in  the  sense  that  Channing 
accepted  Edwards's  premises  and  pushed  them  out  to  their 
conclusions,  or  that  Parker  accepted  all  of  Channing's 
premises,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  rigid  pushing  out  of 
Edwards's  premises  into  their  conclusions  by  himself  and 
his  followers  had  brought  about  a  moral  reductio  ad 
absurdum  and  a  state  of  opinion  against  which  Channing 
rebelled ;  and  that  Channing,  as  it  seemed  to  Parker, 
stopped  short  in  the  carrying  out  of  his  own  principles. 
Thus  the  "Channing  Unitarians,"  while  denying  that 
Christ  was  God,  had  held  that  he  was  of  divine  nature,  was 
the  Son  of  God,  and  had  existed  before  he  came  into  the 
world.  While  rejecting  the  doctrine  of  the  "vicarious 
sacrifice"  they  maintained  that  Christ  was  a  mediator  and 
intercessor,  and  that  his  supernatural  nature  was  testified 
by  miracles.  For  Parker  and  Emerson  it  was  easy  to  take 
the  step  to  the  assertion  that  Christ  was  a  good  and  great 
man,  divine  only  in  the  sense  that  God  possessed  him  more 
fully  than  any  other  man  known  in  history ;  that  it  was 
his  preaching  and  example  that  brought  salvation  to  men, 
and  not  any  special  mediation  or  intercession,  and  that  his 
own  words  and  acts,  and  not  miracles,  are  the  only  and  the 
sufficient  witness  to  his  mission.  In  the  view  of  the  tran- 
scendentalists,  Christ  was  as  human  as  Buddha,  Socrates, 
or  Confucius,  and  the  Bible  was  but  one  among  the 
"Ethnical  Scriptures,"  or  sacred  writings  of  the  peoples, 
passages  from  which  were  published  in  the  transcendental 
organ,  The  Dial. 

As  against  these  new  views,  Channing  Unitarianism  oc- 
cupied already  a  conservative  position.  The  Unitarians 


The  Concord  Writers.  101 

as  a  body  had  never  been  very  numerous  outside  of  eastern 
Massachusetts.  They  had  a  few  churches  in  New  York 
and  in  the  larger  cities  and  towns  elsewhere,  but  the  sect, 
as  such,  was  a  local  one.  Orthodoxy  made  a  sturdy  fight 
against  the  heresy,  under  leaders  like  Leonard  Woods  and 
Moses  Stewart,  of  Andover,  and  Lyman  Beecher,  of  Con- 
necticut. In  the  neighboring  state  of  Connecticut,  for  ex- 
ample, there  was  until  lately,  for  a  period  of  several  years, 
no  distinctly  Unitarian  congregation  worshiping  in  a 
church  edifice  of  its  own.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Unita- 
rians claimed,  with  justice,  that  their  opinions  had,  to  a 
great  extent,  modified  the  theology  of  the  orthodox 
churches.  The  writings  of  Horace  Bushnell,  of  Hartford, 
one  of  the  most  eminent  Congregational  divines,  approach 
Unitarianism  in  their  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
atonement ;  and  the  "  progressive  orthodoxy  "  of  Andover 
is  certainly  not  the  Calvinism  of  Thomas  Hooker  or  of 
Jonathan  Edwards.  But  it  seemed  to  the  transcendentalists 
that  conservative  Unitarianism  was  too  negative  and  "  cul- 
tured," and  Margaret  Fuller  complained  of  the  coldness  of 
the  Boston  pulpits ;  while,  contrariwise,  the  central 
thought  of  transcendentalism,  that  the  soul  has  an  imme- 
diate connection  with  God,  was  pronounced  by  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  a  "  crude  speculation."  This  was  the  thought  of 
Emerson's  address  in  1838  before  the  Cambridge  Divinity 
School,  and  it  was  at  once  made  the  object  of  attack  by 
conservative  Unitarians  like  Henry  Ware  and  Andrews 
Norton.  The  latter,  in  an  address  before  the  same  audience, 
on  "  The  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,"  said  :  "  Nothing  is 
left  that  can  be  called  Christianity  if  its  miraculous  char- 
acter be  denied.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no  intuition,  no 
direct  perception,  of  the  truth  of  Christianity."  And  in  a 
pamphlet  supporting  the  same  side  of  the  question  he 
added  :  "  It  is  not  an  intelligible  error,  but  a  mere  absurd- 


102  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ity,  to  maintain  that  we  are  conscious,  or  have  an  intuitive 
knowledge,  of  the  being  of  God,  of  our  own  immortality, 
.  .  .  or  of  any  other  fact  of  religion."  Ripley  and  Par- 
ker 'replied  in  ^merson's  defense  ;  but  Emerson  himself 
would  never  be  drawn  into  controversy.  He  said  that  he 
could  not  argue.  He  announced  truths,  his  method  was 
that  of  the  seer,  not  of  the  disputant. 

In  1832  Emerson,  who  was  a  Unitarian  clergyman  and 
descended  from  eight  generations  of  clergymen,  had  re- 
signed the  pastorate  of  the  Second  Church  of  Boston  be- 
cause he  could  not  conscientiously  administer  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  communion — which  he  regarded  as  a  mere  act 
of  commemoration — in  the  sense  in  which  it  was  under- 
stood by  his  parishioners.  Thenceforth,  though  he  some- 
times occupied  Unitarian  pulpits,  and  was,  indeed,  all  his 
life  a  kind  of  "lay  preacher,"  he  never  assumed  the  pas- 
torate of  a  church.  The  representative  of  transcendental- 
ism in  the  pulpit  was  Theodore  Parker,  an  eloquent 
preacher,  an  eager  debater,  and  a  prolific  writer  on  many 
subjects,  whose  collected  works  fill  fourteen  volumes. 
Parker  was  a  man  of  strongly  human  traits,  passionate, 
independent,  intensely  religious,  but  intensely  radical,  who 
made  for  himself  a  large  personal  following.  The  more 
advanced  wing  of  the  Unitarians  were  called  after  him, 
"Parkerites."  Many  of  the  Unitarian  churches  refused  to 
"  fellowship  "  with  him  ;  and  the  large  congregation,  or 
audience,  which  assembled  in  Music  Hall  to  hear  his  ser- 
mons, was  stigmatized  as  a  "boisterous  assembly"  which 
came  to  hear  Parker  preach  irreligion. 

It  has  been  said  that,  on  its  philosophical  side,  New  Eng- 
land transcendentalism  was  a  restatement  of  idealism. 
The  impulse  came  from  Germany,  from  the  philosophical 
writings  of  Kant,  Fichte,  Jacobi,  and  Schelling,  and  from 
the  works  of  Coleridge  and  Carlyle,  who  had  domesticated 


The  Concord   Writers.  103 

German  thought  in  England.  In  Channing's  "  Remarks 
on  a  National  Literature,"  quoted  in  our  last  chapter,  the 
essayist  urged  that  our  scholars  should  study  the  authors 
of  France  and  Germany  as  one  means  of  emancipating 
American  letters  from  a  slavish  dependence  on  British  lit- 
erature. And,  in  fact,  German  literature  began,  not  long 
after,  to  be  eagerly  studied  in  New  England.  Emerson 
published  an  American  edition  of  Carlyle's  "Miscellanies," 
including  his  essays  on  German  writers  that  had  appeared 
in  England  between  1822  and  1830.  In  1838  Ripley  began 
to  publish  "Specimens  of  Foreign  Standard  Literature," 
which  extended  to  fourteen  volumes.  In  his  work  of 
translating  and  supplying  introductions  to  the  matter  se- 
lected, he  was  helped  by  Margaret  Fuller,  John  S.  Dwight, 
and  others  who  had  more  or  less  connection  with  the  tran- 
scendental movement. 

The  definition  of  the  new  faith  given  by  Emerson  in  his 
lecture  on  "  The  Transcendentalist,"  1842,  is  as  follows  : 
"  What  is  popularly  called  transcendentalism  among  us  is 
idealism.  .  .  .  The  idealism  of  the  present  day  acquired 
the  name  of  transcendental  from  the  use  of  that  term  by 
Immanuel  Kant,  who  replied  to  the  skeptical  philosophy  of 
Locke,  which  insisted  that  there  was  nothing  in  the  intel- 
lect which  was  not  previously  in  the  experience  of  the 
senses,  by  showing  that  there  was  a  very  important  class  of 
ideas,  or  imperative  forms,  which  did  not  come  by  experi- 
ence, but  through  which  experience  was  acquired ;  that 
these  were  intuitions  of  the  mind  itself,  and  he  denom- 
inated them  transcendental  forms."  Idealism  denies  the 
independent  existence  of  matter.  Transcendentalism 
claims  for  the  innate  ideas  of  God  and  the  soul  a  higher 
assurance  of  reality  than  for  the  knowledge  of  the  outside 
world  derived  through  the  senses.  Emerson  shares  the 
"  noble  doubt  of  idealism."  He  calls  the  universe  a  shade, 


104  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

a  dream,  "this  great  apparition."  "  It  is  a  sufficient  ac- 
count of  that  appearance  we  call  the  world,"  he  wrote  in 
"Nature,"  "that  God  will  teach  a  human  mind,  and  so 
makes  it  the  receiver  of  a  certain  number  of  congruent 
sensations  which  we  call  sun  and  moon,  man  and  woman, 
house  and  trade.  In  my  utter  impotence  to  test  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  report  of  my  senses,  to  know  whether  the  im- 
pressions on  me  correspond  with  outlying  objects,  what 
difference  does  it  make  whether  Orion  is  up  there  in  heaven 
or  some  god  paints  the  image  in  the  firmament  of  the 
soul?  "  On  the  other  hand,  our  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  God  and  of  our  own  souls,  and  our  knowledge  of  right 
and  wrong,  are  immediate,  and  are  independent  of  the 
senses.  We  are  in  direct  communication  with  the  "Over- 
soul,"  the  infinite  Spirit.  "The  soul  in  man  is  the  back- 
ground of  our  being — an  immensity  not  possessed,  that 
cannot  be  possessed."  "From  within  or  from  behind,  a 
light  shines  through  us  upon  things,  and  makes  us  aware 
that  we  are  nothing,  but  the  light  is  all."  Revelation  is 
"  an  influx  of  the  divine  mind  into  our  mind.  It  is  an  ebb 
of  the  individual  rivulet  before  the  flowing  surges  of  the 
sea  of  life."  In  moods  of  exultation,  and  especially  in  the 
presence  of  nature,  this  contact  of  the  individual  soul  with 
the  absolute  is  felt.  "All  mean  egotism  vanishes.  I  be- 
come a  transparent  eyeball ;  I  am  nothing ;  I  see  all  ;  the 
currents  of  the  Universal  Being  circulate  through  me ;  I 
am  part  and  particle  of  God."  The  existence  and  attri- 
butes of  God  are  not  deducible  from  history  or  from  nat- 
ural theology,  but  are  thus  directly  given  us  in  conscious- 
ness. In  his  essay  on  "The  Transcendentalist  "  Emerson 
says:  "His  experience  inclines  him  to  behold  the  pro- 
cession of  facts  you  call  the  world  as  flowing  perpetually 
outward  from  an  invisible,  unsounded  center  in  himself; 
center  alike  of  him  and  of  them,  and  necessitating  him  to 


The  Concord   Writers.  105 

regard  all  things  as  having  a  subjective  or  relative  exist- 
ence— relative  to  that  aforesaid  Unknown  Center  of  him. 
There  is  no  bar  or  wall  in  the  soul  where  man,  the  effect, 
ceases,  and  God,  the  cause,  begins.  We  lie  open  on  one 
side  to  the  deeps  of  spiritual  nature,  to  the  attributes  of 
God." 

Emerson's  point  of  view,  though  familiar  to  students  of 
philosophy,  is  strange  to  the  popular  understanding,  and 
hence  has  arisen  the  complaint  of  his  obscurity.  More- 
over, he  apprehended  and  expressed  these  ideas  as  a  poet, 
in  figurative  and  emotional  language,  and  not  as  a  meta- 
physician, in  a  formulated  statement.  His  own  position  in 
relation  to  systematic  philosophers  is  described  in  what  he 
says  of  Plato,  in  his  series  of  sketches  entitled  "Repre- 
sentative Men,"  1850  :  "  He  has  not  a  system.  The  dearest 
disciples  and  defenders  are  at  fault.  He  attempted  a  theory 
of  the  universe,  and  his  theory  is  not  complete  or  self- 
evident.  One  man  thinks  he  means  this,  and  another  that ; 
he  has  said  one  thing  in  one  place,  and  the  reverse  of  it  in 
another  place."  It  happens,  therefore,  that,  to  many 
students  of  more  formal  philosophies,  Emerson's  meaning 
seems  elusive,  and  he  appears  to  write  from  temporary 
moods  and  to  contradict  himself.  Had  he  attempted  a  rea- 
soned exposition  of  the  transcendental  philosophy,  instead 
of  writing  essays  and  poems,  he  might  have  added  one  more 
to  the  number  of  system-mongers  ;  but  he  would  not  have 
taken  that  significant  place  which  he  occupies  in  the  gen- 
eral literature  of  the  time,  nor  exerted  that  wide  influence 
upon  younger  writers  which  has  been  one  of  the  stimulat- 
ing forces  in  American  thought.  It  was  because  Emerson 
was  a  poet  that  he  is  our  Emerson.  And  yet  it  would  be 
impossible  to  disentangle  his  peculiar  philosophical  ideas 
from  the  body  of  his  writings  and  to  leave  the  latter  to 
stand  upon  their  merits  as  literature  merely.  He  is  the 


106  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

poet  of  certain  high  abstractions,  and  his  religion  is  central 
to  all  his  work — excepting,  perhaps,  his  "  English  Traits," 
1856,  an  acute  study  of  national  characteristics  ;  and  a  few 
of  his  essays  and  verses,  which  are  independent  of  any 
particular  philosophical  standpoint. 

When  Emerson  resigned  his  parish  in  1832  he  made  a 
short  trip  to  Europe,  where  he  visited  Carlyle  at  Craigen- 
puttock  and  Landor  at  Florence.  On  his  return  he  retired 
to  the  village  of  Concord,  Massachusetts,  and  settled  down 
among  his  books  and  his  fields,  becoming  a  sort  of  "  glori- 
fied farmer,"  but  issuing  frequently  from  his  retirement  to 
instruct  and  delight  audiences  of  thoughtful  people  at 
Boston  and  at  other  points  all  through  the  country.  Em- 
erson was  the  perfection  of  a  lyceum  lecturer.  His  manner 
was  quiet  but  forcible,  his  voice  of  charming  quality,  and 
his  enunciation  clean-cut  and  refined.  The  sentence  was 
his  unit  in  composition.  His  lectures  seemed  to  begin  any- 
where and  to  end  anywhere  and  to  resemble  strings  of  ex- 
quisitely polished  sayings  rather  than  continuous  dis- 
courses. His  printed  essays,  with  unimportant  exceptions, 
were  first  written  and  delivered  as  lectures.  In  1836  he 
published  his  first  book,  "Nature,"  which  remains  the 
most  systematic  statement  of  his  philosophy.  It  opened  a 
fresh  spring-head  in  American  thought,  and  the  words  of 
its  introduction  announced  that  its  author  had  broken 
with  the  past.  "  Why  should  not  we  also  enjoy  an  orig- 
inal relation  to  the  universe  ?  Why  should  not  we  have  a 
poetry  and  philosophy  of  insight  and  not  of  tradition, 
and  a  religion  by  revelation  to  us  and  not  the  history  of 
theirs?" 

It  took  eleven  years  to  sell  five  hundred  copies  of  this 
little  book.  But  the  year  following  its  publication  the  re- 
markable Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  at  Cambridge,  on  "  The 
American  Scholar,"  electrified  the  little  public  of  the  uni- 


The  Concord   Writers.  107 

versity.  This  is  described  by  Lowell  as  "an  event  without 
any  former  parallel  in  our  literary  annals,  a  scene  to  be 
always  treasured  in  the  memory  for  its  picturesqueness  and 
its  inspiration.  What  crowded  and  breathless  aisles,  what 
windows  clustering  with  eager  heads,  wha.t  grim  silence  of 
foregone  dissent ! "  To  Concord  came  many  kindred 
spirits,  drawn  by  Emerson's  magnetic  attraction.  Thither 
came,  from  Connecticut,  Amos  Bronson  Alcott,  born  a  few 
years  before  Emerson,  whom  he  outlived ;  a  quaint  and 
benignant  figure,  a  visionary  and  a  mystic  even  among  the 
transcendentalists  themselves,  and  one  who  lived  in  un- 
worldly simplicity  the  life  of  the  soul.  Alcott  had  taught 
school  at  Cheshire,  Conn.,  and  afterward  at  Boston  on  an 
original  plan — compelling  his  scholars,  for  example,  to  flog 
Mm,  when  they  did  wrong,  instead  of  taking  a  flogging 
themselves.  The  experiment  was  successful  until  his 
"  Conversations  on  the  Gospels,"  in  Boston,  and  his  in- 
sistence upon  admitting  colored  children  to  his  benches, 
offended  conservative  opinion  and  broke  up  his  school. 
Alcott  renounced  the  eating  of  animal  food  in  1835.  He 
believed  in  the  union  of  thought  and  manual  labor,  and 
supported  himself  for  some  years  by  the  work  of  his  hands, 
gardening,  cutting  wood,  etc.  He  traveled  into  the  West 
and  elsewhere,  holding  conversations  on  philosophy,  edu- 
cation, and  religion.  He  set  up  a  little  community  at  the 
village  of  Harvard,  Massachusetts,  which  was  rather  less 
successful  than  Brook  Farm,  and  he  contributed  "  Orphic 
Sayings"  to  The  Dial,  which  were  harder  for  the  exoteric 
to  understand  than  even  Emerson's  "Brahma,"  or  "The 
Over-soul." 

Thither  came,  also,  Sarah  Margaret  Fuller,  the  most  in- 
tellectual woman  of  her  time  in  America,  an  eager  student 
of  Greek  and  German  literature  and  an  ardent  seeker  after 
the  true,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful.  She  threw  herself 


108  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

into  many  causes— such  as  temperance  and  the  higher  edu- 
cation of  women.  Her  brilliant  conversation  classes  in 
Boston  attracted  many  "minds"  of  her  own  sex.  Subse- 
quently, as  literary  editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  she 
furnished  a  wider  public  with  reviews  and  book  notices  of 
great  ability.  She  took  part  in  the  Brook  Farm  experi- 
ment, and  she  edited  The  Dial  for  a  time,  contributing  to 
it  the  papers  afterward  expanded  into  her  most  consider- 
able book,  "Woman  in  the  Nineteenth  Century."  In  1846 
she  went  abroad,  and  at  Rome  took  part  in  the  revolution- 
ary movement  of  Mazzini,  having  charge  of  one  of  the 
hospitals  during  the  siege  of  the  city  by  the  French.  In 
1847  she  married  an  impecunious  Italian  nobleman,  the  Mar- 
quis Ossoli.  In  1850  the  ship  on  which  she  was  returning 
to  America,  with  her  husband  and  child,  was  wrecked  on 
Fire  Island  beach  and  all  three  were  lost.  Margaret  Ful- 
ler's collected  writings  are  somewhat  disappointing,  being 
mainly  of  temporary  interest.  She  lives  less  through  her 
books  than  through  the  memoirs  of  her  friends,  Emerson, 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  T.  W.  Higginson,  and  others  who 
knew  her  as  a  personal  influence.  Her  strenuous  and 
rather  overbearing  individuality  made  an  impression  not 
altogether  agreeable  upon  many  of  her  contemporaries. 
Lowell  introduced  a  caricature  of  her  as  "  Miranda"  into 
his  "  Fable  for  Critics,"  and  Hawthorne's  caustic  sketch  of 
her,  preserved  in  the  biography  written  by  his  son,  has 
given  great  offense  to  her  admirers.  "  Such  a  determina- 
tion to  eat  this  huge  universe  !"  was  Carlyle's  character- 
istic comment  on  her  appetite  for  knowledge  and  aspira- 
tions after  perfection. 

To  Concord  also  came  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  who  took 
up  his  residence  there  first  at  the  "Old  Manse,"  and  after- 
ward at  "The  Wayside."  Though  naturally  an  idealist, 
he  said  that  he  came  too  late  to  Concord  to  fall  decidedly 


The  Concord  Writers.  109 

under  Emerson's  influence.  Of  that  he  would  have  stood  in 
little  danger  even  had  he  come  earlier.  He  appreciated  the 
deep  and  subtle  quality  of  Emerson's  imagination,  but  his 
own  shy  genius  always  jealously  guarded  its  independence 
and  resented  the  too  close  approaches  of  an  alien  mind. 
Among  the  native  disciples  of  Emerson  at  Concord  the  most 
noteworthy  were  Henry  Thoreau,  and  his  friend  and  biog- 
rapher, William  Ellery  Channing,  Jr.,  a  nephew  of  the 
great  Channing.  Channing  was  a  contributor  to  The  Dial, 
and  he  published  a  volume  of  poems  which  elicited  a 
fiercely  contemptuous  review  from  Edgar  Poe.  Though 
disfigured  by  affectation  and  obscurity,  many  of  Chan- 
ning's  verses  were  distinguished  by  true  poetic  feeling,  and 
the  last  line  of  his  little  piece,  "A  Poet's  Hope," 

"  If  my  bark  sink  'tis  to  another  sea," 

has  taken  a  permanent  place  in  the  literature  of  tran- 
scendentalism. 

The  private  organ  of  the  transcendentalists  was  The  Dial, 
a  quarterly  magazine,  published  from  1840  to  1844,  and 
edited  by  Emerson  and  Margaret  Fuller.  Among  its  con- 
tributors, besides  those  already  mentioned,  were  Ripley, 
Thoreau,  Parker,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Charles  A.  Dana, 
John  S.  Dwight,  C.  P.  Cranch,  Charles  Emerson,  and  Wil- 
liam H.  Channing,  another  nephew  of  Dr.  Channing.  It 
contained,  along  with  a  good  deal  of  rubbish,  some  of  the 
best  poetry  and  prose  that  have  been  published  in  America. 
The  most  lasting  part  of  its  contents  was  the  contributions 
of  Emerson  and  Thoreau.  But  even  as  a  whole  it  was  a 
unique  way-mark  in  the  history  of  our  literature. 

From  time  to  time  Emerson  collected  and  published  his 
lectures  under  various  titles.  A  first  series  of  "Essays" 
came  out  in  1841,  and  a  second  in  1844  ;  the  "Conduct  of 
Life,"  in  1860  ;  "  Society  and  Solitude,"  in  1870  ;  "  Letters 
and  Social  Aims"  in  1876,  and  "The  Fortune  of  the  Re- 


110  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

public  "  in  1878.  In  1847  he  issued  a  volume  of  "  Poems," 
and  in  1865  "Mayday  and  Other  Poems."  These  writings, 
as  a  whole,  were  variations  on  a  single  theme,  expansions 
and  illustrations  of  the  philosophy  set  forth  in  "Nature" 
and  his  early  addresses.  They  were  strikingly  original, 
rich  in  thought,  filled  with  wisdom,  with  lofty  morality 
and  spiritual  religion.  Emerson,  said  Lowell,  first  "  cut 
the  cable  that  bound  us  to  English  thought  and  gave  us  a 
chance  at  the  dangers  and  glories  of  blue  water."  Never- 
theless, as  it  used  to  be  the  fashion  to  find  an  English 
analogue  for  every  American  writer,  so  that  Cooper  was 
called  the  American  Scott,  and  Mrs.  Sigourney  was  de- 
scribed as  the  Hemaus  of  America,  a  well-worn  critical 
tradition  has  coupled  Emerson  with  Carlyle.  That  his 
mind  received  a  nudge  from  Carlyle's  early  essays  and  from 
"  Sartor  Resartus  "  is  beyond  a  doubt.  They  were  life-long 
friends  and  correspondents,  and  Emerson's  "  Representa- 
tive Men"  is,  in  some  sort,  a  counterpart  of  Carlyle's 
"  Hero  Worship."  But  in  temper  and  style  the  two  writ- 
ers were  widely  different.  Carlyle's  pessimism  and  dissat- 
isfaction with  the  general  drift  of  things  gained  upon  him 
more  and  more,  while  Emerson  was  a  consistent  optimist  to 
the  end.  The  last  of  his  writings  published  during  his  life- 
time, "The Fortune  of  the  Republic,"  contrasts  strangely  in 
its  hopefulness  with  the  desperation  of  Carlyle's  later  utter- 
ances. Even  in  presence  of  the  doubt  as  to  man's  personal 
immortality  he  takes  refuge  in  a  high  and  stoical  faith.  "  I 
think  all  sound  minds  rest  on  a  certain  preliminary  con- 
viction, namely,  that  if  it  be  best  that  conscious  personal 
life  shall  continue  it  will  continue,  and  if  not  best,  then  it 
will  not ;  and  we,  if  we  saw  the  whole,  should  of  course  see 
that  it  was  better  so."  It  is  this  conviction  that  gives  to 
Emerson's  writings  their  serenity  and  their  tonic  quality 
at  the  same  time  that  it  narrows  the  range  of  his  dealings 


The  Concord   Writers.  Ill 

with  life.  As  the  idealist  declines  to  cross-examine  those 
facts  which  he  regards  as  merely  phenomenal,  and  looks 
upon  this  outward  face  of  things  as  upon  a  mask  not  worthy 
to  dismay  the  fixed  soul,  so  the  optimist  turns  away  his 
eyes  from  the  evil  which  he  disposes  of  as  merely  nega- 
tive, as  the  shadow  of  the  good.  Hawthorne's  interest  in 
the  problem  of  sin  finds  little  place  in  Emerson's  philoso- 
phy. Passion  comes  not  nigh  him,  and  "  Faust  "  disturbs 
him  with  its  disagreeableness.  Pessimism  is  to  him  "the 
only  skepticism." 

The  greatest  literature  is  that  which  is  most  broadly 
human,  or,  in  other  words,  that  which  will  square  best 
with  all  philosophies.  But  Emerson's  genius  was  inter- 
pretative rather  than  constructive.  The  poet  dwells  in  the 
cheerful  world  of  phenomena.  He  is  most  the  poet  who 
realizes  most  intensely  the  good  and  the  bad  of  human 
life.  But  idealism,  makes  experience  shadowy  and  subor- 
dinates action  to  contemplation.  To  it  the  cities  of  men, 
with  their  "  frivolous  populations," 

"  are  but  sailing  foam-bells 
Along  thought's  causing  stream." 

Shakespeare  does  not  forget  that  the  world  will  one  day 
vanish  "like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision,"  and  that  we 
ourselves  are  "such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on";  but 
this  is  not  the  mood  in  which  he  dwells.  Again  :  while  it 
is  for  the  philosopher  to  reduce  variety  to  unity,  it  is  the 
poet's  task  to  detect  the  manifold  under  uniformity.  In 
the  great  creative  poets,  in  Shakespeare  and  Dante  and 
Goethe,  how  infinite  the  swarm  of  persons,  the  multitude 
of  forms  !  But  with  Emerson  the  type  is  important,  the 
common  element.  "  In  youth  we  are  mad  for  persons. 
But  the  larger  experience  of  man  discovers  the  identical 
nature  appearing  through  them  all."  "  The  same — the 
same  !  "  he  exclaims  in  his  essay  on  Plato.  "Friend  and 


112  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

foe  are  of  one  stuff;  the  plowman,  the  plow,  and  the  fur- 
row are  of  one  stuff."  And  this  is  the  thought  in 
"  Brahma  "  : 

"  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out ; 

When  me  they  fly  I  am  the  wings  ; 
I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt, 

And  I  the  hymn  the  Brahmin  sings." 

It  is  not  easy  to  fancy  a  writer  who  holds  this  attitude 
toward  "persons"  descending  to  the  composition  of  a 
novel  or  a  play.  Emerson  showed,  indeed,  a  fine  power  of 
character  analysis  in  his  "English  Traits"  and  "Repre- 
sentative Men  "  and  in  his  memoirs  of  Thoreau  and  Mar- 
garet Fuller.  There  is  even  a  sort  of  dramatic  humor  in 
his  portrait  of  Socrates.  But  upon  the  whole  he  stands 
midway  between  constructive  artists,  whose  instinct  it  is 
to  tell  a  story  or  sing  a  song,  and  philosophers,  like  Schell- 
ing,  who  give  poetic  expression  to  a  system  of  thought. 
He  belongs  to  the  class  of  minds  of  which  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  is  the  best  English  example.  He  set  a  high  value 
upon  Browne,  to  whose  style  his  own,  though  far  more 
sententious,  bears  a  resemblance.  Browne's  saying,  for  ex- 
ample, "All  things  are  artificial,  for  nature  is  the  art  of 
God,"  sounds  like  Emerson,  whose  workmanship,  for  the 
rest,  in  his  prose  essays  was  exceedingly  fine  and  close. 
He  was  not  afraid  to  be  homely  and  racy  in  expressing 
thought  of  the  highest  spirituality.  "  Hitch  your  wagon 
to  a  star,"  is  a  good  instance  of  his  favorite  manner. 

Emerson's  verse  often  seems  careless  in  technique.  Most 
of  his  pieces  are  scrappy  and  have  the  air  of  runic  rimes, 
or  little  oracular  "  voicings  "— as  they  say  at  Concord — in 
rhythmic  shape,  of  single  thoughts  on  "  Worship,"  "Char- 
acter," "Heroism,"  "Art,"  "Politics,"  "Culture,"  etc. 
The  content  is  the  important  thing,  and  the  form  is  too 
frequently  awkward  or  bald.  Sometimes,  indeed,  in  the 


The  Concord   Writers.  113 

clear-obscure  of  Emerson's  poetry,  the  deep  wisdom  of  the 
thought  finds  its  most  natural  expression  in  the  imagina- 
tive simplicity  of  the  language.  But  though  this  artless- 
ness  in  him  became  too  frequently  in  his  imitators,  like 
Thoreau  and  Ellery  Channing,  an  obtruded  simplicity, 
among  his  own  poems  are  many  that  leave  nothing  to  be 
desired  in  point  of  wording  and  of  verse.  His  "  Hymn 
Sung  at  the  Completion  of  the  Concord  Monument,"  in 
1836,  is  the  perfect  model  of  an  occasional  poem.  Its  lines 
were  on  everyone's  lips  at  the  time  of  the  centennial  cele- 
brations in  1876,  and  the  "  shot  heard  round  the  world  " 
has  hardly  echoed  farther  than  the  song  which  chronicled 
it.  Equally  current  is  the  stanza  from  "  Voluntaries  "  : 

"  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  '  Thou  must,' 

The  youth  replies,  '  I  can.'  " 

So,  too,  the  famous  lines  from  "  The  Problem  "  : 

"  The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome, 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome, 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity. 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free ; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew  ; 
The  conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

The  most  noteworthy  of  Emerson's  pupils  was  Henry 
David  Thoreau,  "  the  poet  naturalist."  After  his  gradu- 
ation from  Harvard  College,  in  1837,  Thoreau  engaged  in 
school-teaching  and  in  the  manufacture  of  lead-pencils,  but 
soon  gave  up  all  regular  business  and  devoted  himself  to 
walking,  reading,  and  the  study  of  nature.  He  was  at  one 
time  private  tutor  in  a  family  on  Staten  Island,  and  he 
supported  himself  for  a  season  by  doing  odd  jobs  in  land- 
surveying  for  the  farmers  about  Concord.  In  1845  he  built, 
with  his  own  hands,  a  small  cabin  on  the  banks  of  Walden 
Pond,  near  Concord,  and  lived  there  in  seclusion  for  two 


114  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

years.  His  expenses  during  these  years  were  nine  cents  a 
day,  and  he  gave  an  account  of  his  experiment  in  his  most 
characteristic  book,  "Walden,"  published  in  1854.  His 
"Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers  "  appeared 
in  1849.  From  time  to  time  he  went  farther  afield,  and  his 
journeys  were  reported  in  "Cape  Cod,"  the  "Maine 
Woods,"  "Excursions,"  and  "A  Yankee  in  Canada,"  all 
of  which,  as  well  as  a  volume  of  "Letters  "  and  "Early 
Spring  in  Massachusetts,"  have  been  given  to  the  public 
since  his  death,  which  happened  in  1862.  No  one  has  lived 
so  close  to  nature,  and  written  of  it  so  intimately,  as 
Thoreau.  His  life  was  a  lesson  in  economy  and  a  sermon 
on  Emerson's  text,  "Lessen  your  denominator."  He 
wished  to  reduce  existence  to  the  simplest  terms — to 

"  live  all  alone 
Close  to  the  bone, 
And  where  life  is  sweet 
Constantly  eat." 

He  had  a  passion  for  the  wild,  and  seems  like  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  reversion  to  the  type  of  the  Red  Indian.  The  most 
distinctive  note  in  Thoreau  is  his  inhumanity.  Emerson 
spoke  of  him  as  a  "perfect  piece  of  stoicism."  "Man," 
said  Thoreau,  "  is  only  the  point  on  which  I  stand."  He 
strove  to  realize  the  objective  life  of  nature — nature  in  its 
aloofness  from  man  ;  to  identify  himself  with  the  moose 
and  the  mountain.  He  listened,  with  his  ear  close  to  the 
ground,  for  the  voice  of  the  earth.  "What  are  the  trees 
saying?"  he  exclaimed.  Following  upon  the  trail  of  the 
lumberman,  he  asked  the  primeval  wilderness  for  its  secret, 
and 

"  saw  beneath  dim  aisles  in  odorous  beds, 
The  slight  linnsea  hang  its  twin-born  heads." 

He  tried  to  interpret  the  thought  of  Ktaadn  and  to  fathom 
the  meaning  of  the  billows  on  the  back  of  Cape  Cod,  in 


The  Concord   Writers.  115 

their  indifference  to  the  shipwrecked  bodies  that  they 
rolled  ashore.  "  After  sitting  in  my  chamber  many  days, 
reading  the  poets,  I  have  been  out  early  on  a  foggy  morn- 
ing and  heard  the  cry  of  an  owl  in  the  neighboring  wood 
as  from  a  nature  behind  the  common,  unexplored  by  sci- 
ence or  by  literature.  None  of  the  feathered  race  has  yet 
realized  my  youthful  conceptions  of  the  woodland  depths. 
I  had  seen  the  red  election  birds  brought  from  their  re- 
cesses on  my  comrade's  string,  and  fancied  that  their 
plumage  would  assume  stranger  and  more  dazzling  colors, 
like  the  tints  of  evening,  in  proportion  as  I  advanced 
farther  into  the  darkness  and  solitude  of  the  forest.  Still 
less  have  I  seen  such  strong  and  wild  tints  on  any  poet's 
string." 

It  was  on  the  mystical  side  that  Thoreau  apprehended 
transcendentalism.  Mysticism  has  been  defined  as  the 
soul's  recognition  of  its  identity  with  nature.  This 
thought  lies  plainly  in  Schelling's  philosophy,  and  he 
illustrated  it  by  his  famous  figure  of  the  magnet.  Mind 
and  nature  are  one  ;  they  are  the  positive  and  negative 
poles  of  the  magnet.  In  man,  the  Absolute — that  is,  God 
— becomes  conscious  of  himself ;  makes  of  himself,  as  na- 
ture, an  object  to  himself  as  mind.  "The  souls  of  men," 
said  Schelling,  "are  but  the  innumerable  individual 
eyes  with  which  our  infinite  World-Spirit  beholds  him- 
self." This  thought  is  also  clearly  present  in  Emerson's 
view  of  nature,  and  has  caused  him  to  be  accused  of 
pantheism.  But  if  by  pantheism  is  meant  the  doctrine 
that  the  underlying  principle  of  the  universe  is  matter 
or  force,  none  of  the  transcendentalists  was  a  panthe- 
ist. In  their  view  nature  was  divine.  Their  poetry  is 
always  haunted  by  the  sense  of  a  spiritual  reality  which 
abides  beyond  the  phenomena.  Thus  in  Emerson's  "  Two 
Rivers  "  : 


116  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"  Thy  summer  voice,  Musketaquit,* 

Repeats  the  music  of  the  rain, 
But  sweeter  rivers  pulsing  flit 

Through  thee  as  thou  through  Concord  plain. 

"  Thou  in  thy  narfow  banks  art  pent : 

The  stream  I  love  unbounded  goes ; 
Through  flood  and  sea  and  firmament, 

Through  light,  through  life,  it  forward  flows. 

"  I  see  the  inundation  sweet, 

I  hear  the  spending  of  the  stream, 
Through  years,  through  men,  through  nature  fleet, 

Through  passion,  thought,  through  power  and  dream." 

This  mood  occurs  frequently  in  Thoreau.  The  hard 
world  of  matter  becomes  suddenly  all  fluent  and  spiritual, 
and  he  sees  himself  in  it— sees  God.  "This  earth,"  he 
cries,  "  which  is  spread  out  like  a  map  around  me,  is  but 
the  lining  of  my  inmost  soul  exposed."  "  In  me  is  the 
sucker  that  I  see  "  ;  and,  of  Walden  Pond, 

' '  I  am  its  stony  shore, 
And  the  breeze  that  passes  o'er." 

"  Suddenly  old  Time  winked  at  me — ah,  you  know  me, 
you  rogue — and  news  had  come  that  IT  was  well.  That 
ancient  universe  is  in  such  capital  health,  I  think,  un- 
doubtedly it  will  never  die.  ...  I  see,  smell,  taste, 
hear,  feel  that  everlasting  something  to  which  we  are  allied, 
at  once  our  maker,  our  abode,  our  destiny,  our  very  selves." 
It  was  something  ulterior  that  Thoreau  sought  in  nature. 
"The  other  world,"  he  wrote,  "  is  all  my  art :  my  pencils 
will  draw  no  other  :  my  jack-knife  will  cut  nothing  else." 
Thoreau  did  not  scorn,  however,  like  Emerson,  to  "exam- 
ine too  microscopically  the  universal  tablet."  He  was  a 
close  observer  and  accurate  reporter  of  the  ways  of  birds 
and  plants  and  the  minuter  aspects  of  nature.  He  has  had 
many  followers,  who  have  produced  much  pleasant  litera- 
ture on  outdoor  life.  But  in  none  of  them  is  there  that 
*  The  Indian  name  of  Concord  River. 


The  Concord  Writers.  117 

unique  combination  of  the  poet,  the  naturalist,  and  the 
mystic  which  gives  his  page  its  wild,  original  flavor.  He 
had  the  woodcraft  of  a  hunter  and  the  eye  of  a  botanist, 
but  his  imagination  did  not  stop  short  with  the  fact.  The 
sound  of  a  tree  falling  in  the  Maine  woods  was  to  him  "as 
though  a  door  had  shut  somewhere  in  the  damp  and  shaggy 
wilderness."  He  saw  small  things  in  cosmic  relations.  His 
trip  down  the  tame  Concord  has  for  the  reader  the  excite- 
ment of  a  voyage  of  exploration  into  far  and  unknown  re- 
gions. The  river  just  above  Sherman's  Bridge,  in  time  of 
flood  "  when  the  wind  blows  freshly  on  a  raw  March  day, 
heaving  up  the  surface  into  dark  and  somber  billows,"  was 
like  Lake  Huron,  "and  you  may  run  aground  on  Cran- 
berry Island,"  and  "get  as  good  a  freezing  there  as  any- 
where on  the  northwest  coast."  He  said  that  most  of  the 
phenomena  described  in  Kane's  voyages  could  be  observed 
in  Concord. 

The  literature  of  transcendentalism  was  like  the  light  of 
the  stars  in  a  winter  night,  keen  and  cold  and  high.  It  had 
the  pale  cast  of  thought,  and  was  almost  too  spiritual  and 
remote  to  "hit  the  sense  of  mortal  sight."  But  it  was  at 
least  indigenous.  If  not  an  American  literature — not  na- 
tional and  not  inclusive  of  all  sides  of  American  life — it 
was,  at  all  events,  a  genuine  New  England  literature  and 
true  to  the  spirit  of  its  section.  The  tough  Puritan  stock 
had  at  last  put  forth  a  blossom  which  compared  with  the 
warm,  robust  growths  of  English  soil  even  as  the  delicate 
wind  flower  of  the  northern  spring  compares  with  the  cow- 
slips and  daisies  of  old  England. 

In  1842  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  (1804-64),  the  greatest 
American  romancer,  came  to  Concord.  He  had  recently  left 
Brook  Farm,  had  just  been  married,  and  with  his  bride  he 
settled  down  in  the  "Old  Manse"  for  three  paradisiacal 
years.  A  picture  of  this  protracted  honeymoon  and  this 


118  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

sequestered  life,  as  tranquil  as  the  slow  stream  on  whose 
banks  it  was  passed,  is  given  in  the  introductory  chapter 
to  his  "  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,"  1846,  and  in  the  more 
personal  and  confidential  records  of  his  "American  Note 
Books,"  posthumously  published.  Hawthorne  was  thirty- 
eight  when  he  took  his  place  among  the  Concord  literati. 
His  childhood  and  youth  had  been  spent  partly  at  his 
birthplace,  the  old  and  already  somewhat  decayed  seaport 
town  of  Salem,  and  partly  at  his  grandfather's  farm  on 
Sebago  Lake,  in  Maine,  then  on  the  edge  of  the  primitive 
forest.  Maine  did  not  become  a  state,  indeed,  until  1820, 
the  year  before  Hawthorne  entered  Bowdoin  College, 
whence  he  was  graduated  in  1825,  in  the  same  class  with 
Henry  W.  Longfellow  and  one  year  behind  Franklin 
Pierce,  afterward  president  of  the  United  States.  After 
leaving  college  Hawthorne  buried  himself  for  years  in  the 
seclusion  of  his  home  at  Salem.  His  mother,  who  was 
early  widowed,  had  withdrawn  entirely  from  the  world. 
For  months  at  a  time  Hawthorne  kept  his  room,  seeing  no 
other  society  than  that  of  his  mother  and  sisters,  reading 
all  sorts  of  books  and  writing  wild  tales,  most  of  which  he 
destroyed  as  soon  as  he  had  written  them.  At  twilight  he 
would  emerge  from  the  house  for  a  solitary  ramble  through 
the  streets  of  the  town  or  along  the  seaside. 

Old  Salem  had  much  that  was  picturesque  in  its  associ- 
ations. It  had  been  the  scene  of  the  witch  trials  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  it  abounded  in  ancient  mansions, 
the  homes  of  retired  whalers  and  India  merchants.  Haw- 
thorne's father  had  been  a  ship  captain,  and  many  of  his 
ancestors  had  followed  the  sea.  One  of  his  forefathers, 
moreover,  had  been  a  certain  Judge  Hawthorne,  who  in 
1691  had  sentenced  several  of  the  witches  to  death.  The 
thought  of  this  affected  Hawthorne's  imagination  with  a 
pleasing  horror,  and  he  utilized  it  afterward  in  his  "  House 


The  Concord  Writers.  119 

of  the  Seven  Gables."  Many  of  the  old  Salem  houses,  too, 
had  their  family  histories,  with  now  and  then  the  hint  of 
some  obscure  crime  or  dark  misfortune  which  haunted  pos- 
terity with  its  curse  till  all  the  stock  died  out  or  fell  into 
poverty  and  evil  ways,  as  in  the  Pyncheon  family  of  Haw- 
thorne's romance. 

In  the  preface  to  "  The  Marble  Faun  "  Hawthorne  wrote  : 
"No  author  without  a  trial  can  conceive  of  the  difficulty 
of  writing  a  romance  about  a  country  where  there  is  no 
shadow,  no  antiquity,  no  mystery,  no  picturesque  and 
gloomy  wrong,  nor  anything  but  a  commonplace  prosper- 
ity in  broad  and  simple  daylight."  And  yet  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  any  environment  could  have  been  found 
more  fitted  to  his  peculiar  genius  than  this  of  his  native 
town,  or  any  preparation  better  calculated  to  ripen  the 
faculty  that  was  in  him  than  these  long,  lonely  years  of 
waiting  and  brooding  thought. 

From  time  to  time  he  contributed  a  story  or  a  sketch  to 
some  periodical,  such  as  S.  G.  Goodrich's  annual,  the 
Token,  or  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine.  Some  of  these  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  the  judicious  ;  but  they  were 
anonymous  and  signed  by  various  noms  de  plume,  and 
their  author  was  at  this  time — to  use  his  own  words — "  the 
obscurest  man  of  letters  in  America."  In  1828  he  had  is- 
sued anonymously  and  at  his  own  expense  a  short  romance, 
entitled  "Fanshawe."  It  had  little  success,  and  copies  of 
the  first  edition  are  now  exceedingly  rare.  In  1837  he  pub- 
lished a  collection  of  his  magazine  pieces  under  the  title, 
"  Twice-Told  Tales."  The  book  was  generously  praised  in 
the  North  American  Review  by  his  former  classmate,  Long- 
fellow ;  and  Edgar  Poe  showed  his  keen  critical  perception 
by  predicting  that  the  writer  would  easily  put  himself  at 
the  head  of  imaginative  literature  in  America  if  he  would 
discard  allegory,  drop  short  stories,  and  compose  a  genu- 


120  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ine  romance.  Poe  compared  Hawthorne's  work  with  that 
of  the  German  romancer,  Tieck,  and  it  is  interesting  to  find 
confirmation  of  this  dictum  in  passages  of  the  "American 
Note  Books,"  in  which  Hawthorne  speaks  of  laboring  over 
Tieck  with  a  German  dictionary.  The  "  Twice-Told  Tales  " 
are  the  work  of  a  recluse,  who  makes  guesses  at  life  from  a 
knowledge  of  his  own  heart,  acquired  by  a  habit  of  intro- 
spection, but  who  has  had  little  contact  with  men.  Many 
of  them  were  shadowy,  and  others  were  morbid  and  un- 
wholesome. But  their  gloom  was  of  an  interior  kind,  never 
the  physically  horrible  of  Poe.  It  arose  from  weird  psycho- 
logical situations  like  that  of  "  Ethan  Brand  "  in  his  search 
for  the  unpardonable  sin.  Hawthorne  was  true  to  the  in- 
herited instinct  of  puritanism  ;  he  took  the  conscience  for 
his  theme,  and  in  these  early  tales  he  was  already  absorbed 
in  the  problem  of  evil,  the  subtle  ways  in  which  sin  works 
out  its  retribution,  and  the  species  of  fate  or  necessity  that 
the  wrong-doer  makes  for  himself  in  the  inevitable  se- 
quences of  his  crime. 

Hawthorne  was  strongly  drawn  toward  symbols  and 
types,  and  never  quite  followed  Poe's  advice  to  abandon 
allegory.  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  and  his  other  romances 
are  not,  indeed,  strictly  allegories,  since  the  characters  are 
men  and  women  and  not  mere  personifications  of  abstract 
qualities.  Still,  they  all  have  a  certain  allegorical  tinge. 
In  "The  Marble  Faun,"  for  example,  Hilda,  Kenyon, 
Miriam,  and  Donatello  have  been  ingeniously  explained  as 
personifications  respectively  of  the  conscience,  the  reason, 
the  imagination,  and  the  senses.  Without  going  so  far  as 
this,  it  is  possible  to  see  in  these  and  in  Hawthorne's  other 
creations  something  typical  and  representative.  He  uses 
his  characters  like  algebraic  symbols  to  work  out  certain 
problems  with ;  they  are  rather  more  and  yet  rather  less 
than  flesh  and  blood  individuals.  The  stories  in  "  Twice- 


The  Concord  Writers.  121 

Told  Tales  "  and  in  the  second  collection,  "  Mosses  from  an 
Old  Manse,"  1846,  are  more  openly  allegorical  than  his  later 
work.  Thus  "The  Minister's  Black  Veil"  is  a  sort  of 
anticipation  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale  in  "The  Scarlet 
Letter." 

From  1846  to  1849  Hawthorne  held  the  position  of  sur- 
veyor of  the  custom-house  of  Salem.  In  the  preface  to 
' '  The  Scarlet  Letter  "  he  sketched  some  of  the  government 
officials  with  whom  this  office  had  brought  him  into  con- 
tact in  a  way  that  gave  some  offense  to  the  friends  of 
the  victims  and  a  great  deal  of  amusement  to  the  public. 
Hawthorne's  humor  was  quiet  and  fine,  like  Irving's,  but 
less  genial  and  with  a  more  satiric  edge  to  it.  The  book 
last  named  was  written  at  Salem  and  published  in  1850, 
just  before  its  author's  removal  to  Lenox,  now  a  sort  of  in- 
land Newport,  but  then  an  unfashionable  resort  among  the 
Berkshire  Hills.  Whatever  obscurity  may  have  hung  over 
Hawthorne  hitherto  was  effectually  dissolved  by  this  pow- 
erful tale,  which  was  as  vivid  in  coloring  as  the  implica- 
tion of  its  title.  Hawthorne  chose  for  his  background  the 
somber  life  of  the  early  settlers  of  New  England.  He  had 
always  been  drawn  toward  this  part  of  American  history, 
and  in  "Twice-Told  Tales"  had  given  some  illustrations 
of  it  in  "Endicott's  Red  Cross"  and  "Legends  of  the 
Province  House."  Against  this  dark  foil  moved  in  strong 
relief  the  figures  of  Hester  Prynne,  the  woman  taken  in 
adultery ;  her  paramour,  the  Rev.  Arthur  Dimmesdale  ; 
her  husband,  old  Roger  Chillingworth  ;  and  her  illegiti- 
mate child.  In  tragic  power,  in  its  grasp  of  the  elementary 
passions  of  human  nature,  and  in  its  deep  and  subtle  in- 
sight into  the  inmost  secrets  of  the  heart,  this  is  Haw- 
thorne's greatest  book. 

He  never  crowded  his  canvas  with  figures.  In  "  The 
Blithedale  Romance"  and  "The  Marble  Faun"  there  is 


122  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

the  same  parti  carr&,  or  group  of  four  characters.  In  "  The 
House  of  Seven  Gables  "  there  are  five.  The  last  men- 
tioned of  these,  published  in  1852,  was  of  a  more  subdued 
intensity  than  "  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  but  equally  original, 
and,  upon  the  whole,  perhaps  equally  good.  "  The  Blithe- 
dale  Romance,"  published  in  the  same  year,  though  not 
strikingly  inferior  to  the  others,  adhered  more  to  conven- 
tional patterns  in  its  plot  and  in  the  sensational  nature 
of  its  ending.  The  suicide  of  the  heroine  by  drowning, 
and  the  terrible  scene  of  the  recovery  of  her  body,  were 
suggested  to  the  author  by  an  experience  of  his  own  on 
Concord  River,  the  account  of  which,  in  his  own  words, 
may  be  read  in  Julian  Hawthorne's  "Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne and  His  Wife." 

In  1852  Hawthorne  returned  to  Concord  and  bought  the 
"Wayside"  property,  which  he  retained  until  his  death. 
But  in  the  following  year  his  old  college  friend  Pierce,  now 
become  president,  appointed  him  consul  to  Liverpool,  and 
he  went  abroad  for  seven  years.  The  most  valuable  fruit 
of  his  foreign  residence  was  the  romance  of  "  The  Marble 
Faun,"  1860,  the  longest  of  his  fictions  and  the  richest  in 
descriptive  beauty.  The  theme  of  this  was  the  develop- 
ment of  the  soul  through  the  experience  of  sin.  There  is  a 
haunting  mystery  thrown  about  the  story,  like  a  soft  veil 
of  mist,  veiling  the  beginning  and  the  end.  There  is  even 
a  delicate  teasing  suggestion  of  the  preternatural  in  Dona- 
tello,  the  Faun,  a  creation  as  original  as  Shakespeare's  Cal- 
iban or  Fouqu6's  Undine,  and  yet  quite  on  this  side  the 
border-line  of  the  human.  "Our  Old  Home,"  a  book  of 
charming  papers  on  England,  was  published  in  1863.  Man- 
ifold experience  of  life  and  contact  with  men,  affording 
scope  for  his  always  keen  observation,  had  added  range, 
fullness,  warmth  to  the  imaginative  subtlety  which  had 
manifested  itself  even  in  his  earliest  tales.  Two  admirable 


The  Concord   Writers.  123 

books  for  children,  "The  Wonder  Book"  and  "Tangle- 
wood  Tales,"  in  which  the  classical  mythologies  were  re- 
told, should  also  be  mentioned  in  the  list  of  Hawthorne's 
writings,  as  well  as  the  "American,"  "  English,"  and 
"  Italian  Note  Books,"  the  first  of  which  contains  the  seed- 
thoughts  of  some  of  his  finished  works,  together  with  hun- 
dreds of  hints  for  plots,  episodes,  descriptions,  etc.,  which 
he  never  found  time  to  work  out.  Hawthorne's  style,  in 
his  first  sketches  and  stories  a  little  stilted  and  bookish, 
gradually  acquired  an  exquisite  perfection,  and  is  as  well 
worth  study  as  that  of  any  prose  classic  in  the  English 
tongue. 

Hawthorne  was  no  transcendentalist.  He  dwelt  much 
in  a  world  of  ideas,  and  he  sometimes  doubted  whether  the 
tree  on  the  bank  or  its  image  in  the  stream  were  the  more 
real.  But  this  had  little  in  common  with  the  philosophi- 
cal idealism  of  his  neighbors.  He  reverenced  Emerson, 
and  he  held  kindly  intercourse — albeit  a  silent  man  and 
easily  bored — with  Thoreau  and  Ellery  Channing,  and 
even  with  Margaret  Fuller.  But  his  sharp  eyes  saw  what- 
ever was  whimsical  or  weak  in  the  apostles  of  the  new 
faith.  He  had  little  enthusiasm  for  causes  or  reforms,  and 
among  so  many  abolitionists  he  remained  a  Democrat,  and 
even  wrote  a  campaign  life  of  his  friend  Pierce. 

The  village  of  Concord  has  perhaps  done  more  for  Ameri- 
can literature  than  the  city  of  New  York.  Certainly  there 
are  few  places  where  associations,  both  patriotic  and  poetic, 
cluster  so  thickly.  At  one  side  of  the  grounds  of  the  Old 
Manse — which  has  the  river  at  its  back — runs  down  a 
shaded  lane  to  the  Concord  monument  and  the  figure  of 
the  Minute  Man  and  the  successor  of  "  the  rude  bridge  that 
arched  the  flood."  Scarce  two  miles  away,  among  the 
woods,  is  little  VValden— "  God's  drop."  The  men  who 
made  Concord  famous  are  asleep  in  Sleepy  Hollow,  yet 


124  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

still  their  memory  prevails  to  draw  seekers  after  truth  to 
the  Concord  Summer  School  of  Philosophy,  which  met 
annually,  a  few  years  since,  to  reason  high  of  "  God,  Free- 
dom, and  Immortality,"  next  door  to  the  "Wayside,"  and 
under  the  hill  on  whose  ridge  Hawthorne  wore  a  path  as 
he  paced  up  and  down  beneath  the  hemlocks. 


1.  RALPH     WALDO    EMERSON:       "Nature";     "The 
American  Scholar";    "Literary    Ethics";    "The    Tran- 
scendentalist "  ;    "The  Over-soul";    "Address  before  the 
Cambridge  Divinity  School  "  ;  "  English  Traits  "  ;    "  Rep- 
resentative Men  "  ;  "Poems." 

2.  HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU  :    "Excursions";  "Wai- 
den"  ;  "A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers  "  ; 
"  Cape  Cod  "  ;  "  The  Maine  Woods." 

3.  NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE:     "Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse";    "The  Scarlet    Letter";    "The  House    of   the 
Seven  Gables"  ;  "  The  Blithedale  Romance  "  ;  "  The  Mar- 
ble Faun"  ;  "  Our  Old  Home." 

4.  "Transcendentalism  in  New  England."     By  O.  B. 
Frothingham.    New  York  :  1875. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS — 1837-1861. 

WITH  few  exceptions,  the  men  who  have  made  Ameri- 
can literature  what  it  is  have  been  college  graduates.  And 
yet  our  colleges  have  not  commonly  been,  in  themselves, 
literary  centers.  Most  of  them  have  been  small  and  poor, 
and  situated  in  little  towns  or  provincial  cities.  Their 
alumni  scatter  far  and  wide  immediately  after  graduation, 
and  even  those  of  them  who  may  feel  drawn  to  a  life  of 
scholarship  or  letters  find  little  to  attract  them  at  the  home 
of  their  alma  mater,  and  seek  by  preference  the  larger 
cities,  where  periodicals  and  publishing  houses  offer  some 
hope  of  support  in  a  literary  career.  Even  in  the  older  and 
better  equipped  universities  the  faculty  is  usually  a  corps  of 
working  scholars,  each  man  intent  upon  his  specialty  and 
rather  inclined  to  undervalue  merely  "  literary  "  perform- 
ance. In  many  cases  the  fastidious  and  hypercritical  turn 
of  mind  which  besets  the  scholar,  the  timid  conservatism 
which  naturally  characterizes  an  ancient  seat  of  learning, 
and  the  spirit  of  theological  conformity  which  suppresses 
free  discussion,  have  exerted  their  benumbing  influence 
upon  the  originality  and  creative  impulse  of  their  inmates. 
Hence  it  happens  that,  while  the  contributions  of  Ameri- 
can college  teachers  to  the  exact  sciences,  to  theology  and 
philology,  metaphysics,  political  philosophy,  and  the  se- 
verer branches  of  learning  have  been  honorable  and  impor- 
tant, they  have  as  a  class  made  little  mark  upon  the  gen- 
eral literature  of  the  country.  The  professors  of  literature 

125 


126  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

in  our  colleges  are  usually  persons  who  have  made  no  addi- 
tions to  literature,  and  the  professors  of  rhetoric  seem  or- 
dinarily to  have  been  selected  to  teach  students  how  to 
write,  for  the  reason  that  they  themselves  have  never  writ- 
ten anything  that  any  one  has  ever  read. 

To  these  remarks  the  Harvard  College  of  some  fifty  years 
ago  offers  some  striking  exceptions.  It  was  not  the  large 
and  fashionable  university  that  it  has  lately  grown  to  be, 
with  its  multiplied  elective  courses,  its  numerous  faculty, 
and  its  somewhat  motley  collection  of  undergraduates  ;  but 
a  small  school  of  the  classics  and  mathematics,  with  some- 
thing of  ethics,  natural  science,  and  the  modern  languages 
added  to  its  old-fashioned  scholastic  curriculum,  and  with 
a  very  homogeneous  clientele,  drawn  mainly  from  the 
Unitarian  families  of  eastern  Massachusetts.  Nevertheless 
a  finer  intellectual  life,  in  many  respects,  was  lived  at  old 
Cambridge  within  the  years  covered  by  this  chapter  than 
nowadays  at  the  same  place,  or  at  any  date  in  any  other 
American  university  town.  The  neighborhood  of  Boston, 
where  the  commercial  life  has  never  so  entirely  overlain 
the  intellectual  as  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  has  been 
a  standing  advantage  to  Harvard  College.  The  recent  up- 
heaval in  religious  thought  had  secured  toleration  and  made 
possible  that  free  and  even  audacious  interchange  of  ideas 
without  which  a  literary  atmosphere  is  impossible.  From 
these,  or  from  whatever  causes,  it  happened  that  the  old 
Harvard  scholarship  had  an  elegant  and  tasteful  side  to  it, 
so  that  the  dry  erudition  of  the  schools  blossomed  into  a  gen- 
erous culture  ;  and  there  were  men  in  the  professors'  chairs 
who  were  no  less  efficient  as  teachers  because  they  were 
also  poets,  orators,  wits,  and  men  of  the  world.  In  the 
seventeen  years  from  1821  to  1839  there  were  graduated 
from  Harvard  College,  Emerson,  Holmes,  Simmer,  Phil- 
lips, Motley,  Thoreau,  Lowell,  and  Edward  Everett  Hale  ; 


The  Cambridge  Scholars,  127 

some  of  whom  took  up  their  residence  at  Cambridge,  others 
at  Boston,  and  others  at  Concord,  which  was  quite  as  much 
a  spiritual  suburb  of  Boston  as  Cambridge  was.  In  1836, 
when  Longfellow  became  professor  of  modern  languages 
at  Harvard,  Sumner  was  lecturing  in  the  Law  School. 
The  following  year — in  which  Thoreau  took  his  bachelor's 
degree — witnessed  the  delivery  of  Emerson's  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  lecture  on  "  The  American  Scholar,"  in  the  college 
chapel,  and  Wendell  Phillips's  speech  on  "  The  Murder  of 
Lovejoy,"  in  Faneuil  Hall.  Lowell,  whose  description  of 
the  impression  produced  by  the  former  of  these  famous 
addresses  has  been  quoted  in  a  previous  chapter,  was  an 
undergraduate  at  the  time.  He  took  his  degree  in  1838, 
and  in  1855  succeeded  Longfellow  in  the  chair  of  modern 
languages.  Holmes  had  been  chosen  in  1847  professor  of 
anatomy  and  physiology  in  the  Medical  School — a  position 
which  he  held  until  1882.  The  historians,  Prescott  and 
Bancroft,  had  been  graduated  in  1814  and  1817  respectively. 
The  former's  first  important  publication,  "  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella,"  appeared  in  1837.  Bancroft  had  been  a  tutor  in 
the  college  in  1822-23,  and  the  initial  volume  of  his  "  His- 
tory of  the  United  States  "  was  issued  in  1835.  Another  of 
the  Massachusetts  school  of  historical  writers,  Francis 
Parkman,  took  his  first  degree  at  Harvard  in  1844.  Cam- 
bridge was  still  hardly  more  than  a  village,  a  rural  out- 
skirt  of  Boston,  such  as  Lowell  described  it  in  his  article, 
"  Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago,"  originally  contributed  to 
Putnam's  Monthly  in  1853,  and  afterward  reprinted  in  his 
"Fireside  Travels,"  1864.  The  situation  of  a  university 
scholar  in  old  Cambridge  was  thus  an  almost  ideal  one. 
Within  easy  reach  of  a  great  city,  with  its  literary  and 
social  clubs,  its  theaters,  lecture  courses,  public  meetings, 
dinner-parties,  etc.,  he  yet  lived  withdrawn  in  an  academic 
retirement  among  elm-shaded  avenues  and  leafy  gardens  ; 


128  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

the  dome  of  the  Boston  State-house  looming  distantly 
across  the  meadows  where  the  Charles  laid  its  "  steel-blue 
sickle"  upon  the  variegated,  plush-like  ground  of  the  wide 
marsh.  There  was  thus,  at  all  times  during  the  quarter  of 
a  century  embraced  between  1837  and  1861,  a  group  of 
brilliant  men  resident  in  or  about  Cambridge  and  Boston, 
meeting  frequently  and  intimately,  and  exerting  upon 
one  another  a  most  stimulating  influence.  Some  of  the 
closer  circles — all  concentric  to  the  university — of  which 
this  group  was  loosely  composed  were  laughed  at  by  out- 
siders as  "  Mutual  Admiration  Societies."  Such  was,  for 
instance,  the  "  Five  of  Clubs,"  whose  members  were  Long- 
fellow, Sumner,  C.  C.  Felton,  professor  of  Greek  at  Har- 
vard and  afterward  president  of  the  college,  G.  S.  Hillard, 
a  graceful  lecturer,  essayist,  and  poet,  of  a  somewhat  ama- 
teurish kind,  and  Henry  R.  Cleveland,  of  Jamaica  Plain, 
a  lover  of  books  and  a  writer  of  them. 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  (1807-82),  the  most  widely 
read  and  loved  of  American  poets — or,  indeed,  of  all  con- 
temporary poets  in  England  and  America,  though  identified 
with  Cambridge  for  nearly  fifty  years,  was  a  native  of  Port- 
laud,  Maine,  and  a  graduate  of  Bowdoin  College,  in  the 
same  class  with  Hawthorne.  Since  leaving  college,  in  1825, 
he  had  studied  and  traveled  for  some  years  in  Europe,  and 
had  held  the  professorship  of  modern  languages  at  Bowdoin. 
He  had  published  several  text-books,  a  number  of  articles 
on  the  Romance  languages  and  literatures  in  the  North 
American  Review,  a  thin  volume  of  metrical  translations 
from  the  Spanish,  a  few  original  poems  in  various  period- 
icals, and  the  pleasant  sketches  of  European  travel  entitled 
"  Outre-Mer."  But  Longfellow's  fame  began  with  the  ap- 
pearance in  1839  of  his  "  Voices  of  the  Night."  Excepting 
an  earlier  collection  by  Bryant  this  was  the  first  volume  of 
real  poetry  published  in  New  England,  and  it  had  more 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  129 

warmth  and  sweetness,  a  greater  richness  and  variety,  than 
Bryant's  work  ever  possessed.  Longfellow's  genius  was  al- 
most feminine  in  its  flexibility  and  its  sympathetic  quality. 
It  readily  took  the  color  of  its  surroundings  and  opened 
itself  eagerly  to  impressions  of  the  beautiful  from  every 
quarter,  but  especially  from  books.  This  first  volume  con- 
tained a  few  things  written  during  his  student  days  at 
Bowdoin,  one  of  which,  a  blank-verse  piece  on  "Autumn," 
clearly  shows  the  influence  of  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis." 
Most  of  these  juvenilia  had  nature  for  their  theme,  but 
they  were  not  so  sternly  true  to  the  New  England  land- 
scape as  Thoreau  or  Bryant.  The  skylark  and  the  ivy  ap- 
pear among  their  scenic  properties,  and  in  the  best  of  them, 
"Woods  in  Winter,"  it  is  the  English  "  hawthorn,"  and 
not  any  American  tree,  through  which  the  gale  is  made  to 
blow,  just  as  later  Longfellow  uses  "rooks"  instead  of 
crows.  The  young  poet's  fancy  was  instinctively  putting 
out  feelers  toward  the  storied  lands  of  the  Old  World,  and 
in  his  "Hymn  of  the  Moravian  Nuns  of  Bethlehem"  he 
transformed  the  rude  church  of  the  Moravian  sisters  to  a 
cathedral  with  "glimmering  tapers,"  swinging  censers, 
chancel,  altar,  cowls,  and  "dim  mysterious  aisle."  After 
his  visit  to  Europe  Longfellow  returned  deeply  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  romance.  It  was  his  mission  to  refine 
our  national  taste  by  opening  to  American  readers,  in  their 
own  vernacular,  new  springs  of  beauty  in  the  literatures  of 
foreign  tongues.  The  fact  that  this  mission  was  interpre- 
tative, rather  than  creative,  hardly  detracts  from  Longfel- 
low's true  originality.  It  merely  indicates  that  his  inspira- 
tion came  to  him  in  the  first  instance  from  other  sources 
than  the  common  life  about  him.  He  naturally  began  as  a 
translator,  and  this  first  volume  contained,  among  other 
things,  exquisite  renderings  from  the  German  of  Uhland, 
Salis,  and  Miiller,  from  the  Danish,  French,  Spanish,  and 


130  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Anglo-Saxon,  and  a  few  passages  from  Dante.  Longfellow 
remained  all  his  life  a  translator,  and  in  subtler  ways  than 
by  direct  translation  he  infused  the  fine  essence  of  Euro- 
pean poetry  into  his  own.  He  loved 

"  Tales  that  have  the  rime  of  age 
And  chronicles  of  eld." 

The  golden  light  of  romance  is  shed  upon  his  page,  and  it 
is  his  habit  to  borrow  medieval  and  Catholic  imagery  from 
his  favorite  Middle  Ages,  even  when  writing  of  American 
subjects.  To  him  the  clouds  are  hooded  friars,  that  "  tell 
their  beads  in  drops  of  rain  "  ;  the  midnight  winds  blowing 
through  woods  and  mountain  passes  are  chanting  solemn 
masses  for  the  repose  of  the  dying  year,  and  the  strain  ends 
with  the  prayer — 

"  Kyrie,  eleyson, 
Christe,  eleyson." 

In  his  journal  he  wrote  characteristically :  "  The  black 
shadows  lie  upon  the  grass  like  engravings  in  a  book. 
Autumn  has  written  his  rubric  on  the  illuminated  leaves, 
the  wind  turns  them  over  and  chants  like  a  friar."  This 
in  Cambridge,  of  a  moonshiny  night,  on  the  first  day  of  the 
American  October!  But  several  of  the  pieces  in  "Voices 
of  the  Night "  sprang  more  immediately  from  the  poet's 
own  inner  experience.  The  "Hymn  to  the  Night,"  the 
"  Psalm  of  Life,"  "  The  Keaper  and  the  Flowers,"  "  Foot- 
steps of  Angels,"  "The  Light  of  Stars,"  and  "  The  Be- 
leaguered City"  spoke  of  love,  bereavement,  comfort,  pa- 
tience, and  faith.  In  these  lovely  songs,  and  in  many 
others  of  the  same  kind  which  he  afterward  wrote,  Long- 
fellow touched  the  hearts  of  all  his  countrymen.  America 
is  a  country  of  homes,  and  Longfellow,  as  the  poet  of  sen- 
timent and  of  the  domestic  affections,  became  and  remains 
far  more  general  in  his  appeal  than  such  a  "cosmic" 
singer  as  Whitman,  who  is  still  practically  unknown  to  the 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  131 

"fierce  democracy"  to  which  he  lias  addressed  himself. 
It  would  be  hard  to  overestimate  the  influence  for  good 
exerted  by  the  tender  feeling  and  the  pure  and  sweet  moral- 
ity which  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies  of  Long- 
fellow's writings,  that  have  been  circulated  among  readers 
of  all  classes  in  America  and  England,  have  brought  with 
them. 

Three  later  collections,  "Ballads  and  Other  Poems," 
1842  ;  "  The  Belfry  of  Bruges,"  1846  ;  and  "The  Seaside  and 
the  Fireside,"  1850,  comprise  most  of  what  is  noteworthy 
in  Longfellow's  minor  poetry.  The  first  of  these  embraced, 
together  with  some  renderings  from  the  German  and  the 
Scandinavian  languages,  specimens  of  stronger  original 
work  than  the  author  had  yet  put  forth  ;  namely,  the  two 
powerful  ballads  of  "The  Skeleton  in  Armor  "and  "The 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus."  The  former  of  these,  written  in 
the  swift  leaping  meter  of  Dray  ton's  "  Ode  to  the  Cambro 
Britons  on  their  Harp,"  was  suggested  by  the  digging  up  of 
a  mail-clad  skeleton  at  Fall  River — a  circumstance  which 
the  poet  linked  with  the  traditions  about  the  Bound  Tower 
at  Newport,  thus  giving  to  the  whole  the  spirit  of  a  Norse 
viking  song  of  war  and  of  the  sea.  "The  Wreck  of  the 
Hesperus"  was  occasioned  by  the  news  of  shipwrecks  on 
the  coast  near  Gloucester,  and  by  the  name  of  a  reef — "Nor- 
man's Woe" — where  many  of  them  took  place.  It  was 
written  one  night  between  twelve  and  three,  and  cost  the 
poet,  he  said,  "hardly  an  effort."  Indeed,  it  is  the  spon- 
taneous ease  and  grace,  the  unfailing  taste  of  Longfellow's 
lines,  which  are  their  best  technical  quality.  There  is  noth- 
ing obscure  or  esoteric  about  his  poetry.  If  there  is  little 
passion  or  intellectual  depth,  there  is  always  genuine  poetic 
feeling,  often  a  very  high  order  of  imagination,  and  almost 
invariably  the  choice  of  the  right  word.  In  this  volume 
were  also  included  "The  Village  Blacksmith"  and 


132  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"  Excelsior."  The  latter  and  the  "Psalm  of  Life"  have 
had  a  "damnable  iteration  "  which  causes  them  to  figure  as 
Longfellow's  most  popular  pieces.  They  are  by  no  means, 
however,  among  his  best.  They  are  vigorously  expressed 
commonplaces  of  that  hortatory  kind  which  passes  for 
poetry,  but  is,  in  reality,  a  vague  species  of  preaching. 

In  "The  Belfry  of  Bruges"  and  "The  Seaside  and  the 
Fireside"  the  translations  were  still  kept  up,  and  among 
the  original  pieces  were  "  The  Occultation  of  Orion,"  the 
most  imaginative  of  all  Longfellow's  poems,  "Seaweed," 
which  has  very  noble  stanzas,  the  favorite  "Old  Clock  on 
the  Stairs,"  "  The  Building  of  the  Ship,"  with  its  magnifi- 
cent closing  apostrophe  to  the  Union,  and  "The  Fire  of 
Driftwood,"  the  subtlest  in  feeling  of  anything  that  the 
poet  ever  wrote.  With  these  were  verses  of  a  more  familiar 
quality,  such  as  "The  Bridge,"  "Resignation,"  and  "The 
Day  is  Done,"  and  many  others,  all  reflecting  moods  of 
gentle  and  pensive  sentiment,  and  drawing  from  analogies 
in  nature  or  in  legend  lessons  which,  if  somewhat  obvious, 
were  expressed  with  perfect  art.  Like  Keats,  he  appre- 
hended everything  on  its  beautiful  side.  Longfellow  was 
all  poet.  Like  Ophelia  in  "  Hamlet," 

"  Thought  and  affection,  passion,  hell  itself, 
[He]  turns  to  favor  and  to  prettiness." 

He  cared  very  little  about  the  intellectual  movement  of  the 
age.  The  transcendental  ideas  of  Emerson  passed  over  his 
head  and  left  him  undisturbed.  For  politics  he  had  that 
gentlemanly  distaste  which  the  cultivated  class  in  America 
had  already  begun  to  entertain.  In  1842  he  printed  a  small 
volume  of  "  Poems  on  Slavery,"  which  drew  commenda- 
tion from  his  friend  Sumner,  but  had  nothing  of  the 
fervor  of  Whittier's  or  Lowell's  utterances  on  the  same  sub- 
ject. 

It  is   interesting  to   compare   his  journals  with   Haw- 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  133 

thorne's  "  American  Note  Books,"  and  to  observe  in  what 
very  different  ways  the  two  writers  made  prey  of  their 
daily  experiences  for  literary  material.  A  favorite  haunt 
of  Longfellow's  was  the  bridge  between  Boston  and  Cam- 
bridgeport,  the  same  which  he  put  into  verse  in  his  poem, 
"  The  Bridge."  "  I  always  stop  on  the  bridge,"  he  writes 
in  his  journal ;  "  tide  waters  are  beautiful.  From  the  ocean 
up  into  the  land  they  go,  like  messengers,  to  ask  why  the 
tribute  has  not  been  paid.  The  brooks  and  rivers  answer 
that  there  has  been  little  harvest  of  snow  and  rain  this 
year.  Floating  seaweed  and  kelp  are  carried  up  into  the 
meadows,  as  returning  sailors  bring  oranges  in  bandanna 
handkerchiefs  to  friends  in  the  country."  And  again  : 
"  We  leaned  for  a  while  on  the  wooden  rail  and  enjoyed  the 
silvery  reflection  on  the  sea,  making  sundry  comparisons. 
Among  other  thoughts  we  had  this  cheering  one,  that  the 
whole  sea  was  flashing  with  this  heavenly  light,  though  we 
saw  it  only  in  a  single  track  ;  the  dark  waves  are  the  dark 
providences  of  God  ;  luminous,  though  not  to  us  ;  and  even 
to  ourselves  in  another  position."  "  Walk  on  the  bridge, 
both  ends  of  which  are  lost  in  the  fog,  like  human  life  mid- 
way between  two  eternities  ;  beginning  and  ending  in 
mist."  In  Hawthorne  an  allegoric  meaning  is  usually 
something  deeper  and  subtler  than  this,  and  seldom  so 
openly  expressed.  Many  of  Longfellow's  poems — "The 
Beleaguered  City"  for  example — may  be  definitely  divided 
into  two  parts ;  in  the  first,  a  story  is  told  or  a  natural  phe- 
nomenon described  ;  in  the  second,  the  spiritual  application 
of  the  parable  is  formally  set  forth.  This  method  became 
with  him  almost  a  trick  of  style,  and  his  readers  learn  to 
look  for  the  hcec  fabula  docet  at  the  end  as  a  matter  of 
course.  As  for  the  prevailing  optimism  in  Longfellow's 
view  of  life — of  which  the  above  passage  is  an  instance — 
it  seems  to  be  in  him  an  affair  of  temperament,  and  not,  as 


134  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

in  Emerson,  the  result  of  philosophic  insight.  Perhaps, 
however,  in  the  last  analysis,  optimism  and  pessimism  are 
subjective — the  expression  of  temperament  or  individual 
experience,  since  the  facts  of  life  are  the  same,  whether 
seen  through  Schopenhauer's  eyes  or  through  Emerson's. 
If  there  is  any  particular  in  which  Longfellow's  inspiration 
came  to  him  at  first  hand  and  not  through  books,  it  is  in 
respect  to  the  aspects  of  the  sea.  On  this  theme  no  Ameri- 
can poet  has  written  more  beautifully  and  with  a  keener 
sympathy  than  the  author  of  "  The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus  " 
and  of  "  Seaweed." 

In  1847  was  published  the  long  poem  of  "Evangeline." 
The  story  of  the  Acadian  peasant  girl  who  was  separated 
from  her  lover  in  the  dispersion  of  her  people  by  the  Eng- 
lish troops,  and  after  weary  wanderings  and  a  life-long 
search,  found  him  at  last,  an  old  man,  dying  in  a  Philadel- 
phia hospital,  was  told  to  Longfellow  by  the  Rev.  H.  L. 
Conolly,  who  had  previously  suggested  it  to  Hawthorne  as 
a  subject  for  a  story.  Longfellow,  characteristically  enough, 
"  got  up  "  the  local  color  for  his  poem  from  Haliburton's 
account  of  the  dispersion  of  the  Grand  Pr6  Acadiaus,  from 
Darby's  "Geographical  Description  of  Louisiana"  and 
Watson's  "Annals  of  Philadelphia."  He  never  needed  to 
go  much  outside  his  library  for  literary  impulse  and  mate- 
rial. Whatever  may  be  held  as  to  Longfellow's  inventive 
powers  as  a  creator  of  characters  or  an  interpreter  of  Amer- 
ican life,  his  originality  as  an  artist  is  manifested  by  his 
successful  domestication  in  "Evangeline"  of  the  dactylic 
hexameter,  which  no  English  poet  had  yet  used  with  ef- 
fect. The  English  poet,  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  who  lived 
for  a  time  in  Cambridge,  followed  Longfellow's  example  in 
the  use  of  hexameter  in  his  "  Bothie  of  Tober-na-Vuolich," 
so  that  we  have  now  arrived  at  the  time — a  proud  moment 
for  American  letters — when  the  works  of  our  writers  began 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  135 

to  react  upon  the  literature  of  Europe.  But  the  beauty  of 
the  descriptions  in  "Evangeline"  and  the  pathos — somewhat 
too  drawn  out — of  the  story  made  it  dear  to  a  multitude  of 
readers  who  cared  nothing  about  the  technical  disputes  of 
Poe  and  other  critics  as  to  whether  or  not  Longfellow's 
lines  were  sufficiently  "spondaic"  to  represent  truthfully 
the  quantitative  hexameters  of  Homer  and  Vergil. 

In  1855  appeared  "  Hiawatha,"  Longfellow's  most  aborig- 
inal and  "American  "  book.  The  tripping  trochaic  meas- 
ure he  borrowed  from  the  Finnish  epic  "  Kalevala."  The 
vague,  childlike  mythology  of  the  Indian  tribes,  with  its 
anthropomorphic  sense  of  the  brotherhood  between  men, 
animals,  and  the  forms  of  inanimate  nature,  he  took  from 
Schoolcraft's  "Algic  Researches,"  1839.  He  fixed  forever, 
in  a  skilfully  chosen  poetic  form,  the  more  inward  and  im- 
aginative part  of  Indian  character,  as  Cooper  had  given 
permanence  to  its  external  and  active  side.  Of  Longfel- 
low's dramatic  experiments,  "The  Golden  Legend,"  1851, 
alone  deserves  mention  here.  This  was  in  his  chosen  realm; 
a  tale  taken  from  the  ecclesiastical  annals  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  precious  with  martyrs'  blood  and  bathed  in  the  rich 
twilight  of  the  cloister.  It  contains  some  of  his  best  work, 
but  its  merit  is  rather  poetic  than  dramatic,  although 
Ruskin  praised  it  for  the  closeness  with  which  it  entered 
into  the  temper  of  the  monk. 

Longfellow  has  pleased  the  people  more  than  the  critics. 
He  gave  freely  what  he  had,  and  the  gift  was  beautiful. 
Those  who  have  looked  into  his  poetry  for  something  else 
than  poetry,  or  for  poetry  of  some  other  kind,  have  not 
been  slow  to  assert  that  he  was  a  lady's  poet — one  who  sat- 
isfied callow  youths  and  schoolgirls  by  uttering  common- 
places in  graceful  and  musical  shape,  but  who  offered  no 
strong  meat  for  men.  Miss  Fuller  called  his  poetry  thin, 
and  the  poet  himself— or,  rather,  a  portrait  of  the  poet  which 


136  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

frontispieced  an  illustrated  edition  of  his  works— a  "  dandy 
Pindar."  This  is  not  true  of  his  poetry,  or  of  the  best  of 
it.  But  he  had  a  singing  and  not  a  talking  voice,  and  in 
his  prose  one  becomes  sensible  of  a  certain  weakness. 
"Hyperion,"  for  example,  published  in  1839,  a  loitering 
fiction  interspersed  with  descriptions  of  European  travel, 
is,  upon  the  whole,  a  weak  book,  overflowery  in  diction 
and  sentimental  in  tone. 

The  crown  of  Longfellow's  achievements  as  a  translator 
was  his  great  version  of  Dante's  "  Divina  Commedia,"  pub- 
lished between  1867  and  1870.  It  is  a  severely  literal,  al- 
most a  line  for  line,  rendering.  The  meter  is  preserved, 
but  the  rhyme  sacrificed.  If  not  the  best  English  poem 
constructed  from  Dante,  it  is  at  all  events  the  most  faith- 
ful and  scholarly  paraphrase.  The  sonnets  which  accom- 
panied it  are  among  Longfellow's  best  work.  He  seems 
to  have  been  raised  by  daily  communion  with  the  great 
Tuscan  into  a  habit  of  deeper  and  more  subtle  thought 
than  is  elsewhere  common  in  his  poetry. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  (1809-94)  was  a  native  of  Cam- 
bridge and  a  graduate  of  Harvard  in  the  class  of  '29  ;  a 
class  whose  anniversary  reunions  he  has  celebrated  in 
something  like  forty  distinct  poems  and  songs.  For  sheer 
cleverness  and  versatility  Dr.  Holmes  was,  perhaps,  unri- 
valed among  American  men  of  letters.  He  has  been  poet, 
wit,  humorist,  novelist,  essayist,  and  a  college  lecturer  and 
writer  on  medical  topics.  In  all  of  these  departments  he 
has  produced  work  which  ranks  high,  if  not  with  the 
highest.  His  father,  Dr.  Abiel  Holmes,  was  a  graduate  of 
Yale  and  an  orthodox  minister  of  liberal  temper,  but  the 
son  early  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  Unitarians ;  and,  as 
was  natural  to  a  man  of  satiric  turn  and  with  a  very  hu- 
man enjoyment  of  a  fight,  whose  youth  was  cast  in  an  age 
of  theological  controversy,  he  had  his  fling  at  Calvinism, 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  137 

and  prolonged  the  slogans  of  old  battles  into  a  later  gen- 
eration ;  sometimes,  perhaps,  insisting  upon  them  rather 
wearisomely  and  beyond  the  limits  of  good  taste.  He  had, 
even  as  an  undergraduate,  a  reputation  for  cleverness  at 
writing  comic  verses,  and  many  of  his  good  things  in  this 
kind,  such  as  "The  Dorchester  Giant"  and  "The  Height 
of  the  Ridiculous,"  were  contributed  to  the  Collegian,  a 
students'  paper.  But  he  first  drew  the  attention  of  a  wider 
public  by  his  spirited  ballad  of  "  Old  Ironsides  " — 

"  Ay !  Tear  her  tattered  ensign  down !  " — 

composed  about  1839,  when  it  was  proposed  by  the  govern- 
ment to  take  to  pieces  the  unseaworthy  hulk  of  the  fa- 
mous old  man-of-war,  Constitution.  Holines's  indignant 
protest — which  has  been  a  favorite  subject  for  schoolboy 
declamation — had  the  effect  of  postponing  the  vessel's  fate 
for  a  great  many  years.  From  1830-35  the  young  poet  was 
pursuing  his  medical  studies  in  Boston  and  Paris,  contrib- 
uting now  and  then  some  verses  to  the  magazines.  Of  his 
life  as  a  medical  student  in  Paris  there  are  many  pleasant 
reminiscences  in  his  "Autocrat"  and  other  writings,  as 
where  he  tells,  for  instance,  of  a  dinner-party  of  Americans 
in  the  French  capital,  where  one  of  the  company  brought 
tears  of  homesickness  into  the  eyes  of  his  sodales  by  saying 
that  the  tinkle  of  the  ice  in  the  champagne  glasses  re- 
minded him  of  the  cow-bells  in  the  rocky  old  pastures  of 
New  England.  In  1836  he  printed  his  first  collection  of 
poems.  The  volume  contained,  among  a  number  of  pieces 
broadly  comic,  like  "  The  September  Gale,"  "  The  Music 
Grinders,"  and  "The  Ballad  of  the  Oysterman  " — which 
at  once  became  widely  popular, — a  few  poems  of  a  finer  and 
quieter  temper,  in  which  there  was  a  quaint  blending  of 
the  humorous  and  the  pathetic.  Such  were  "My  Aunt" 
and  "The  Last  Leaf" — which  Abraham  Lincoln  found 
"inexpressibly  touching,"  and  which  it  is  difficult  to  read 


138  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

without  the  double  tribute  of  a  smile  and  a  tear.  The  vol- 
ume contained  also  "  Poetry  :  A  Metrical  Essay,"  read  be- 
fore the  Harvard  chapter  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society, 
which  was  the  first  of  that  long  line  of  capital  occasional 
poems  which  Holmes  has  been  spinning  for  half  a  cen- 
tury with  no  sign  of  fatigue  and  with  scarcely  any  falling 
off"  in  freshness  ;  poems  read  or  spoken  or  sung  at  all  man- 
ner of  gatherings,  public  and  private,  at  Harvard  com- 
mencements, class  days,  and  other  academic  anniversaries ; 
at  inaugurations,  centennials,  dedications  of  cemeteries, 
meetings  of  medical  associations,  mercantile  libraries, 
Burns  clubs,  and  New  England  societies  ;  at  rural  festivals 
and  city  fairs ;  openings  of  theaters,  layings  of  corner- 
stones, birthday  celebrations,  jubilees,  funerals,  commem- 
oration services,  dinners  of  welcome  or  farewell  to  Dickens, 
Bryant,  Everett,  Whittier,  Longfellow,  Grant,  Farragut, 
the  Grand-duke  Alexis,  the  Chinese  embassy,  and  what 
not.  Probably  no  poet  of  any  age  or  clime  has  written  so 
much  and  so  well  to  order.  He  has  been  particularly 
happy  in  verses  of  a  convivial  kind,  toasts  for  big  civic 
feasts,  or  postprandial  rhymes  for  the  petit  comit& — the 
snug  little  dinners  of  the  chosen  few  ;  his 

"  The  quaint  trick  to  cram  the  pithy  line 
That  cracks  so  crisply  over  bubbling  wine." 

And  though  he  could  write  on  occasion  a  "Song  for  a 
Temperance  Dinner,"  he  has  preferred  to  chant  the  praise 
of  the  punch  bowl  and  to 

"  feel  the  old  convivial  glow  (unaided)  o'er  me  stealing, 
The  warm,  champagny,  old-particular-brandy-punchy  feeling." 

It  would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  the  many  good 
things  of  this  sort  which  Holmes  has  written,  full  of  wit  and 
wisdom,  and  of  humor,  lightly  dashed  with  sentiment  and 
sparkling  with  droll  analogies,  sudden  puns,  and  unexpected 
turns  of  rhyme  and  phrase.  Among  the  best  of  them  are 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  139 

"Nux  Postcoenatica,"  "A  Modest  Request,"  "Ode  for  a 
Social  Meeting,"  "The  Boys,"  and  "Rip  Van  Winkle, 
M.D."  Holmes's  favorite  measure,  in  his  longer  poems,  is 
the  heroic  couplet  which  Pope's  example  seems  to  have 
consecrated  forever  to  satiric  and  didactic  verse.  He  wrote 
as  easily  in  this  meter  as  if  it  were  prose,  and  with  much 
of  Pope's  epigrammatic  neatness.  He  also  managed  with 
facility  the  anapsestics  of  Moore  and  the  ballad  stanza  which 
Hood  had  made  the  vehicle  for  his  drolleries.  It  cannot 
be  expected  that  verses  manufactured  to  pop  with  the 
corks  and  fizz  with  the  champagne  at  academic  banquets 
should  much  outlive  the  occasion ;  or  that  the  habit  of 
producing  such  verses  on  demand  should  foster  in  the  pro- 
ducer that  "high  seriousness"  which  Matthew  Arnold 
asserts  to  be  one  mark  of  all  great  poetry.  Holmes's  poetry 
is  mostly  on  the  colloquial  level,  excellent  society  verse,  but 
even  in  its  serious  moments  too  smart  and  too  pretty  to  be 
taken  very  gravely  ;  with  a  certain  glitter,  knowingness,  and 
flippancy  about  it,  and  an  absence  of  that  self-forgetfulness 
and  intense  absorption  in  its  theme  which  characterize  the 
work  of  the  higher  imagination.  This  is  rather  the  prod- 
uct of  fancy  and  wit.  Wit,  indeed,  in  the  old  sense  of 
quickness  in  the  perception  of  analogies,  was  the  staple  of 
his  mind.  His  resources  in  the  way  of  figure,  illustration, 
allusion,  and  anecdote  were  wonderful.  Age  could  not 
wither  him  nor  custom  stale  his  infinite  variety,  and  there- 
was  as  much  powder  in  his  latest  pyrotechnics  as  in  the 
rockets  which  he  sent  up  half  a  century  ago.  Yet,  though 
the  humorist  in  him  rather  outweighed  the  poet,  he  wrote 
a  few  things,  like  "  The  Chambered  Nautilus  "  and  "Home- 
sick in  Heaven,"  which  are  as  purely  and  deeply  poetic  as 
"The  One-Hoss  Shay"  and  "The  Prologue"  are  funny. 
Dr.  Holmes  was  not  of  the  stuff  of  which  idealists  and  en- 
thusiasts are  made.  As  a  physician  and  a  student  of  sci- 


140  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ence,  the  facts  of  the  material  universe  counted  for  much 
with  him.  His  clear,  positive,  alert  intellect  was  always 
impatient  of  mysticism.  He  had  the  sharp  eye  of  the 
satirist  and  the  man  of  the  world  for  oddities  of  dress,  dia- 
lect, and  manners.  Naturally  the  transcendental  move- 
ment struck  him  on  its  ludicrous  side,  and  in  his  "  After- 
Dinner  Poem,"  read  at  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  dinner  at 
Cambridge  in  1843,  he  had  his  laugh  at  the  "Orphic 
odes"  and  "runes"  of  the  bedlamite  seer  and  bard  of 
mystery. 

"  Who  rides  a  beetle  which  he  calls  a  '  sphinx.' 
And  O  what  questions  asked  in  club-foot  rhyme 
Of  Earth  the  tongueless,  and  the  deaf-mute  Time ! 
Here  babbling  '  Insight '  shouts  in  Nature's  ears 
His  last  conundrum  on  the  orbs  and  spheres  ; 
There  Self-inspection  sucks  its  little  thumb, 
With  '  Whence  am  I? '  and  '  Wherefore  did  I  come? '  " 

Curiously  enough,  the  author  of  these  lines  lived  to  write 
an  appreciative  life  of  the  poet  who  wrote  "  The  Sphinx." 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  toryism  or  social  conservatism  in 
Holmes.  He  acknowledged  a  preference  for  the  man  with 
a  pedigree,  the  man  who  owned  family  portraits,  had  been 
brought  up  in  familiarity  with  books,  and  could  pronounce 
"  view  "  correctly.  Readers  unhappily  not  of  the  "  Brah- 
min caste  of  New  England  "  have  sometimes  resented  as 
snobbishness  Holmes's  harping  on  "  family,"  and  his  per- 
petual application  of  certain  favorite  shibboleths  to  other 
people's  ways  of  speech.  "The  woman  who  calc'lates  is 
lost." 

"  Learning  condemns  beyond  the  reach  of  hope 
The  careless  lips  that  speak  of  s6ap  for  soap.    .    .    . 
Do  put  your  accents  in  the  proper  spot : 
Don't,  let  me  beg  you,  don't  say  '  How  ? '  for  '  What?  ' 
The  things  named  '  pants '  in  certain  documents, 
A  word  not  made  for  gentlemen,  but '  gents.'  " 

With  the  rest  of  "society,"  he  was  disposed  to  ridicule 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  141 

the  abolition  movement  as  a  crotchet  of  the  eccentric  and 
the  long-haired.  But  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  he 
lent  his  pen,  his  tongue,  and  his  own  flesh  and  blood  to  the 
cause  of  the  Union.  The  individuality  of  Holmes's  writ- 
ings comes  in  part  from,  their  local  and  provincial  bias. 
He  has  been  the  laureate  of  Harvard  College  and  the  bard 
of  Boston  City,  an  urban  poet,  with  a  cockneyish  fondness 
for  old  Boston  ways  and  things — the  Common  and  the  Frog 
Pond,  Faneuil  Hall  and  King's  Chapel  and  the  Old  South, 
Bunker  Hill,  Long  Wharf,  the  Tea  Party,  and  the  town- 
crier.  It  was  Holmes  who  invented  the  playful  saying 
that  "  Boston  State-house  is  the  hub  of  the  solar  system." 
In  1857  was  started  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  a  magazine 
which  has  published  a  good  share  of  the  best  work  done  by 
American  writers  within  the  past  generation.  Its  immedi- 
ate success  was  assured  by  Dr.  Holmes's  brilliant  series  of 
papers,  "  The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,"  1858,  fol- 
lowed at  once  by  "The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table," 
1859,  and  later  by  "  The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table,"  1873. 
"  The  Autocrat  "  is  its  author's  masterpiece,  and  holds  the 
fine  quintessence  of  his  humor,  his  scholarship,  his  satire, 
genial  observation,  and  ripe  experience  of  men  and  cities. 
The  form  is  as  unique  and  original  as  the  contents,  being 
something  between  an  essay  and  a  drama  ;  a  succession  of 
monologues  or  table  talks  at  a  typical  American  boarding- 
house,  with  a  thread  of  story  running  through  the  whole. 
The  variety  of  mood  and  thought  is  so  great  that  these 
conversations  never  tire,  and  the  prose  is  interspersed  with 
some  of  the  author's  choicest  verse.  "  The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast  Table  "  followed  too  closely  on  the  heels  of  "  The 
Autocrat,"  and  had  less  freshness.  The  third  number  of 
the  series  was  better,  and  was  pleasantly  reminiscent  and 
slightly  garrulous,  Dr.  Holmes  being  now  (1873)  sixty-four 
years  old,  and  entitled  to  the  gossiping  privilege  of  age. 


142  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

The  personnel  of  the  "  Breakfast  Table"  series,  such  as  the 
landlady  and  the  landlady's  daughter  and  her  son,  Benja- 
min Franklin,  the  schoolmistress,  the  young  man  named 
John,  the  Divinity  Student,  the  Kohinoor,  the  Sculpin,  the 
Scarabseus,  and  the  Old  Gentleman  who  sits  opposite,  are 
not  fully  drawn  characters,  but  outlined  figures,  lightly 
sketched — as  is  the  Autocrat's  wont — by  means  of  some 
trick  of  speech,  or  dress,  or  feature  ;  but  they  are  quite  life- 
like enough  for  their  purpose,  which  is  mainly  to  furnish 
listeners  and  foils  to  the  eloquence  and  wit  of  the  chief 
talker. 

In  1860  and  1867  Holmes  entered  the  field  of  fiction  with 
two  "medicated  novels,"  "Elsie  Venner"  and  "The 
Guardian  Angel."  The  first  of  these  was  a  singular  tale, 
whose  heroine  united  with  her  very  fascinating  human  at- 
tributes something  of  the  nature  of  a  serpent ;  her  mother 
having  been  bitten  by  a  rattlesnake  a  few  months  before 
the  birth  of  the  girl,  and  kept  alive  meanwhile  by  the  use 
of  powerful  antidotes.  The  heroine  of  "  The  Guardian 
Angel  "  inherited  lawless  instincts  from  a  vein  of  Indian 
blood  in  her  ancestry.  These  two  books  were  studies  of 
certain  medico-psychological  problems.  They  preached 
Dr.  Holmes's  favorite  doctrines  of  heredity  and  of  the  modi- 
fied nature  of  moral  responsibility  by  reason  of  transmitted 
tendencies  which  limit  the  freedom  of  the  will.  In 
"Elsie  Venner,"  in  particular,  the  weirdly  imaginative 
and  speculative  character  of  the  leading  motive  suggests 
Hawthorne's  method  in  fiction,  but  the  background  and 
the  subsidiary  figures  have  a  realism  that  is  in  abrupt  con- 
trast with  this,  and  gives  a  kind  of  doubleness  and  want  of 
keeping  to  the  whole.  The  Yankee  characters,  in  particu- 
lar, and  the  satirical  pictures  of  New  England  country  life 
are  open  to  the  charge  of  caricature.  In  "The  Guardian 
Angel"  the  figure  of  Byles  Gridley,  the  old  scholar,  is 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  143 

drawn  with  thorough  sympathy,  and  though  some  of  his 
acts  are  improbable,  he  is,  on  the  whole,  Holmes's  most 
vital  conception  in  the  region  of  dramatic  creation. 

James  Russell  Lowell  (1819-91),  the  foremost  of  American 
critics  and  one  of  the  foremost  of  American  poets,  was, 
like  Holmes,  a  native  of  Cambridge,  and,  like  Emerson 
and  Holmes,  a  clergyman's  son.  In  1855  he  succeeded 
Longfellow  as  professor  of  modern  languages  in  Harvard 
College.  Of  late  years  he  held  important  diplomatic  posts, 
like  Everett,  Irving,  Bancroft,  Motley,  and  other  Ameri- 
cans distinguished  in  letters,  having  been  United  States 
minister  to  Spain,  and,  under  two  administrations,  to  the 
court  of  St.  James.  Lowell  was  not  so  spontaneously  and 
exclusively  a  poet  as  Longfellow,  and  his  popularity  with 
the  average  reader  has  never  been  so  great.  His  appeal  has 
been  to  the  few  rather  than  to  the  many,  to  an  audience  of 
scholars  and  of  the  judicious  rather  than  to  the  "  ground- 
lings "  of  the  general  public.  Nevertheless  his  verse, 
though  without  the  evenness,  instinctive  grace,  and  un- 
erring good  taste  of  Longfellow's,  has  more  energy  and  a 
stronger  intellectual  fiber,  while  in  prose  he  is  very  greatly 
the  superior.  His  first  volume,  "A  Year's  Life,"  1841,  gave 
some  promise.  In  1843  he  started  a  magazine,  The  Pioneer ; 
which  only  reached  its  third  number,  though  it  counted 
among  its  contributors  Hawthorne,  Poe,  Whittier,  and 
Miss  Barrett  (afterward  Mrs.  Browning).  A  second  vol- 
ume of  poems,  printed  in  1844,  showed  a  distinct  advance, 
in  such  pieces  as  "The  Shepherd  of  King  Admetus," 
"Rhoecus,"  a  classical  myth,  told  in  excellent  blank 
verse,  and  the  same  in  subject  with  one  of  Landor's  pol- 
ished intaglios  ;  and  "  The  Legend  of  Brittany,"  a  narra- 
tive poem,  which  had  fine  passages,  but  no  firmness  in  the 
management  of  the  story.  As  yet,  it  was  evident,  the 
young  poet  had  not  found  his  theme.  This  came  with  the 


144  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

outbreak  of  the  Mexican  War,  which  was  unpopular  in 
New  England,  and  which  the  Free  Soil  party  regarded  as 
a  slave-holders'  war,  waged  without  provocation  against  a 
sister  republic,  and  simply  for  the  purpose  of  extending  the 
area  of  slavery. 

In  1846,  accordingly,  "The  Biglow  Papers  "  began  to 
appear  in  the  Boston  Courier,  and  were  collected  and  pub- 
lished in  book  form  in  1848.  These  were  a  series  of  rhymed 
satires  upon  the  government  and  the  war  party,  written  in 
the  Yankee  dialect,  and  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  Hosea 
Biglow,  a  homespun  genius  in  a  down-east  country  town, 
whose  letters  to  the  editor  were  indorsed  and  accompanied 
by  the  comments  of  the  Rev.  Homer  Wilbur,  A.M.,  pastor 
of  the  First  Church  in  Jaalam,  and  (prospective)  member 
of  many  learned  societies.  The  first  paper  was  a  derisive 
address  to  a  recruiting  sergeant,  with  a  denunciation  of  the 
"  nigger-drivin'  states"  and  the  "  northern  dough-faces  "  ; 
a  plain  hint  that  the  North  would  do  better  to  secede  than 
to  continue  doing  dirty  work  for  the  South  ;  and  an  ex- 
pression of  those  universal  peace  doctrines  wThich  were 
then  in  the  air,  and  to  which  Longfellow  gave  serious  ut- 
terance in  his  "  Occultation  of  Orion." 

"  Ez  for  war,  I  call  it  murder — 

There  you  hev  it  plain  an '.flat : 
I  don't  want  to  go  no  furder 

Than  my  Testyment  for  that  ; 
God  hez  said  so  plump  an'  fairly, 

It's  as  long  as  it  is  broad, 
An'  you've  gut  to  git  up  airly 

Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God." 

The  second  number  was  a  versified  paraphrase  of  a  letter 
received  from  Mr.  Birdofredom  Sawin,  "  a  yung  feller  of 
our  town  that  was  cussed  fool  enuff  to  goe  atrottin  inter 
Miss  Chiff  artcr  a  drum  and  fife,"  and  who  finds  when  he 
gets  to  Mexico  that 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  145 

"  This  kind  o'  sogerin'  aint  a  mite  like  our  October  trainin'." 

Of  the  subsequent  papers  the  best  was,  perhaps,  "What 
Mr.  Robinson  Thinks,"  an  election  ballad  which  caused 
universal  laughter,  and  was  on  everybody's  tongue. 

"The  Biglow  Papers"  remain  Lowell's  most  original 
contribution  to  American  literature.  They  are,  all  in  all, 
the  best  political  satires  in  the  language,  and  unequaled  as 
portraitures  of  the  Yankee  character,  with  its  cuteness, 
its  homely  wit,  and  its  latent  poetry.  Under  the  racy 
humor  of  the  dialect — which  became  in  Lowell's  hands  a 
medium  of  literary  expression  almost  as  effective  as  Burns's 
Ayrshire  Scotch — burned  that  moral  enthusiasm  and  that 
hatred  of  wrong  and  deification  of  duty — "  Stern  daughter 
of  the  voice  of  God  " — which,  in  the  tough  New  England 
stock,  stands  instead  of  the  passion  in  the  blood  of  south- 
ern races.  Lowell's  serious  poems  on  political  questions, 
such  as  "  The  Present  Crisis,"  "  Ode  to  Freedom,"  and 
"  The  Capture  of  Fugitive  Slaves,"  have  the  old  Puritan 
fervor,  and  such  lines  as 

"  They  are  slaves  who  dare  not  be 
In  the  right  with  two  or  three," 

and  the  passage  beginning 

"  Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on  the  throne," 

became  watchwords  in  the  struggle  against  slavery  and 
disunion.  Some  of  these  were  published  in  his  volume  of 
1848  and  the  collected  edition  of  his  poems,  in  two  vol- 
umes, issued  in  1850.  These  also  included  his  most  ambi- 
tious narrative  poem,  "The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,"  an 
allegorical  and  spiritual  treatment  of  one  of  the  legends  of 
the  Holy  Grail.  Lowell's  genius  was  not  epical,  but  lyric 
and  didactic.  The  merit  of  "  Sir  Launfal  "  is  not  in  the 
telling  of  the  story,  but  in  the  beautiful  descriptive  epi- 
sodes, one  of  which,  commencing, 


146  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"  And  what  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June  ? 
Then  if  ever  come  perfect  days," 

is  as  current  as  anything  that  he  has  written.  It  is  signifi- 
cant of  the  lack  of  a  natural  impulse  toward  narrative  in- 
vention in  Lowell  that,  unlike  Longfellow  and  Holmes,  he 
never  tried  his  hand  at  a  novel.  One  of  the  most  impor- 
tant parts  of  a  novelist's  equipment  he  certainly  possessed, 
namely,  an  insight  into  character  and  an  ability  to  delineate 
it.  This  gift  is  seen  especially  in  his  sketch  of  Parson 
Wilbur,  who  edited  "  The  Biglow  Papers"  with  a  delight- 
fully pedantic  introduction,  glossary,  and  notes,  in  the 
prose  essay  "  On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners," 
and  in  the  uncompleted  poem,  "Fitz  Adam's  Story."  See 
also  the  sketch  of  Captain  Underhill  in  the  essay  on  "  New 
England  Two  Centuries  Ago." 

"The  Biglow  Papers"  when  brought  out  in  a  volume 
were  prefaced  by  imaginary  notices  of  the  press,  including 
a  capital  parody  of  Carlyle,  and  a  reprint  from  the  "Jaalam 
Independent  Blunderbuss  "  of  the  first  sketch — afterward 
amplified  and  enriched— of  that  perfect  Yankee  idyl  "  The 
Courtin' ".  Between  1862  and  1865  a  second  series  of 
"Biglow  Papers"  appeared,  called  out  by  the  events  of 
the  Civil  War.  Some  of  these,  as,  for  instance,  "Jonathan 
to  John,"  a  remonstrance  with  England  for  her  unfriendly 
attitude  toward  the  North,  were  not  inferior  to  anything  in 
the  earlier  series ;  and  others  were  even  superior  as  poems, 
equal,  indeed,  in  pathos  and  intensity  to  anything  that 
Lowell  has  written  in  his  professedly  serious  verse.  In 
such  passages,  the  dialect  wears  rather  thin,  and  there  is  a 
certain  incongruity  between  the  rustic  spelling  and  the 
vivid  beauty  and  power  and  the  figurative  cast  of  the 
phrase  in  stanzas  like  the  following  : 

"  Wut's  words  to  them  whose  faith  an'  truth 
On  war's  red  techstone  rang  true  metal, 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  147 

Who  ventered  life  an'  love  an'  youth 
For  the  gret  prize  o'  death  in  battle? 

To  him  who,  deadly  hurt,  agen 
Flashed  on  afore  the  charge's  thunder, 

Tippin'  with  fire  the  bolt  of  men 
That  rived  the  rebel  line  asunder?  " 

Charles  Sumner,  a  somewhat  heavy  person,  with  little 
sense  of  humor,  wished  that  the  author  of  "  The  Biglow 
Papers  "  "could  have  used  good  English."  In  the  lines  just 
quoted,  indeed,  the  bad  English  adds  nothing  to  the  effect. 
In  1848  Lowell  wrote  "A  Fable  for  Critics,"  something  after 
the  style  of  Sir  John  Suckling's  "Session  of  the  Poets";  a 
piece  of  rollicking  doggerel  in  which  he  surveyed  the  Ameri- 
can Parnassus,  scattering  about  headlong  fun,  sharp  satire, 
and  sound  criticism  in  equal  proportion.  Never  an  indus- 
trious workman,  like  Longfellow,  at  the  poetic  craft,  but 
preferring  to  wait  for  the  mood  to  seize  him,  he  allowed 
eighteen  years  to  go  by,  from  1850  to  1868,  before  publishing 
another  volume  of  verse.  In  the  latter  year  appeared  "  Un- 
der the  Willows,"  which  contains  some  of  his  ripest  and 
most  perfect  work,  notably  "A  Winter  Evening  Hymn  to 
My  Fire,"  with  its  noble  and  touching  close — suggested  by, 
perhaps,  at  any  rate  recalling,  the  dedication  of  Goethe's 
"Faust," 

"  Ihr  naht  euch  wieder,  schwankende  Gestalten," 
the  subtle  "  Footpath  "  and  "  In  the  Twilight,"  the  lovely 
little  poems  "Auf  Wiedersehen"  and  "After  the  Funeral," 
and  a  number  of  spirited  political  pieces,  such  as  "Villa 
Franca"  and  "  The  Washers  of  the  Shroud."  This  volume 
contained  also  his  "Ode  Recited  at  the  Harvard  Commem- 
oration" in  1865.  This,  although  uneven,  is  one  of  the 
finest  occasional  poems  in  the  language,  and  the  most 
important  contribution  which  our  Civil  War  has  made 
to  song.  It  was  charged  with  the  grave  emotion  of  one 
who  not  only  shared  the  patriotic  grief  and  exultation  of 


148  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

his  alma  mater  in  the  sacrifice  of  her  sons,  but  who  felt  a 
more  personal  sorrow  in  the  loss  of  kindred  of  his  own, 
fallen  in  the  front  of  battle.  Particularly  noteworthy  in 
this  memorial  ode  are  the  tribute  to  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
third  strophe,  beginning,  "Many  loved  Truth,"  the  ex- 
ordium, "O  Beautiful!  my  Country!  ours  once  more!"  and 
the  close  of  the  eighth  strophe,  where  the  poet  chants  of  the 
youthful  heroes  who 

"  come  transfigured  back, 

Secure  from  change  in  their  high-hearted  ways, 
Beautiful  evermore  and  with  the  rays 
Of  morn  on  their  white  Shields  of  Expectation." 

From  1857  to  1862  Lowell  edited  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and 
from  1863  to  1872  the  North  American  Review.  His  prose, 
beginning  with  an  early  volume  of  "  Conversations  on  Some 
of  the  Old  Poets,"  1844,  consisted  mainly  of  critical  essays 
on  individual  writers,  such  as  Dante,  Chaucer,  Spenser, 
Emerson,  Shakespeare,  Thoreau,  Pope,  Carlyle,  together 
with  papers  of  a  more  miscellaneous  kind,  like  "Witch- 
craft," <e  New  England  Two  Centuries  Ago,"  "  My  Garden 
Acquaintance,"  "A  Good  Word  for  Winter,"  "Abraham 
Lincoln."  Two  volumes  of  these  were  published  in  1870 
and  1876,  under  the  title  "Among  My  Books,"  and  another, 
"  My  Study  Windows,"  in  1871. 

As  a  literary  critic  Lowell  ranks  easily  among  the  first. 
His  scholarship  was  thorough,  his  judgment  keen,  and  he 
poured  out  upon  his  page  an  unwithholding  wealth  of 
knowledge,  humor,  wit,  and  imagination  from  the  fullness 
of  an  overflowing  mind.  His  prose  has  not  the  chastened 
correctness  and  "low  tone"  of  Matthew  Arnold's.  It  is 
rich,  exuberant,  and  sometimes  overfanciful,  running  away 
into  excesses  of  allusion  or  following  the  lead  of  a  chance 
pun,  so  as  sometimes  to  lay  itself  open  to  the  charge  of 
pedantry  and  bad  taste.  Lowell's  resources  in  the  way  of 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  149 

illustration  and  comparison  were  endless,  and  the  readiness 
of  his  wit  and  his  delight  in  using  it  put  many  temptations 
in  his  way.  Purists  in  style  accordingly  take  offense  at  his 
saying  that  "  Milton  is  the  only  man  who  ever  got  much 
poetry  out  of  a  cataract,  and  that  was  a  cataract  in  his 
eye"  ;  or  of  his  speaking  of  "  a  gentleman  for  whom  the 
bottle  before  him  reversed  the  wonder  of  the  stereoscope 
and  substituted  the  Gascon  v  for  the  b  in  binocular,"  which 
is  certainly  a  puzzling  and  roundabout  fashion  of  telling 
us  that  he  had  drunk  so  much  that  he  saw  double.  The 
critics  also  find  fault  with  his  coining  such  words  as  "  un- 
disprivacied,"  and  with  his  writing  such  lines  as  the 
famous  one— from  "The  Cathedral,"  1870— 

"  Spume-sliding  down  the  baffled  decuman." 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  his  earlier  style  lacked  the 
crowning  grace  of  simplicity,  but  it  is  precisely  by  reason 
of  its  allusive  quality  that  scholarly  readers  take  pleasure 
in  it.  They  like  a  diction  that  has  stuff  in  it  and  is  woven 
thick,  and  where  a  thing  is  said  in  such  a  way  as  to  recall 
many  other  things.  It  should  also  be  added  that  these 
faults  of  taste — if  faults  they  are — are  almost  entirely  absent 
from  his  latest  work.  The  prose  of  "Democracy  and 
Other  Addresses,"  1887  (delivered  for  the  most  part  in 
England,  on  various  memorial  occasions  from  1881  to  1885), 
is  admirably  pure,  dignified,  and  solid.  The  like  is  true 
of  the  posthumous  volume  of  "Latest  Literary  Essays 
and  Addresses,"  published  in  1892. 

Mention  should  be  made,  in  connection  with  this  Cam- 
bridge circle,  of  one  writer  who  touched  its  circumference 
briefly.  This  was  Sylvester  Judd,  a  graduate  of  Yale,  who 
entered  the  Harvard  Divinity  School  in  1837,  and  in  1840 
became  minister  of  a  Unitarian  church  in  Augusta,  Maine. 
Judd  published  several  books,  but  the  only  one  of  them  at 


150  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

all  rememberable  was  "Margaret,"  1845,  a  novel  of  which 
Lowell  said,  in  "A  Fable  for  Critics,"  that  it  was  "  the  first 
Yankee  book  with  the  soul  of  down-east  in  it."  It  was 
very  imperfect  in  point  of  art,  and  its  second  part — a  rhap- 
sodical description  of  a  sort  of  Unitarian  Utopia — is  quite 
unreadable.  But  in  the  delineation  of  the  few  chief  charac- 
ters and  of  the  rude,  wild  life  of  an  outlying  New  England 
township  just  after  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  as 
well  as  in  the  tragic  power  of  the  catastrophe,  there  was 
genius  of  a  high  order. 

As  the  country  has  grown  older  and  more  populous,  and 
works  in  all  departments  of  thought  have  multiplied,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  draw  more  strictly  the  line  between 
the  literature  of  knowledge  and  the  literature  of  power. 
Political  history,  in  and  of  itself,  scarcely  falls  within  the 
limits  of  this  sketch,  and  yet  it  cannot  be  altogether  dis- 
missed, for  the  historian's  art,  at  its  highest,  demands  imagi- 
nation, narrative  skill,  and  a  sense  of  unity  and  proportion 
in  the  selection  and  arrangement  of  his  facts,  all  of  which 
are  literary  qualities.  It  is  significant  that  many  of  our 
best  historians  have  begun  authorship  in  the  domain  of 
imaginative  literature  :  Bancroft  with  an  early  volume  of 
poems ;  Motley  with  his  historical  romances,  "  Merry 
Mount"  and  "Morton's  Hope";  and  Parkman  with  a 
novel,  "  Vassall  Morton."  The  oldest  of  that  modern  group 
of  writers  that  have  given  America  an  honorable  position 
in  the  historical  literature  of  the  world  was  William  Hick- 
ling  Prescott  (1796-1859).  Prescott  chose  for  his  theme  the 
history  of  the  Spanish  conquests  in  the  New  World,  a  sub- 
ject full  of  romantic  incident  and  susceptible  of  that  glow- 
ing and  perhaps  slightly  overgorgeous  coloring  which  he 
laid  on  with  a  liberal  hand.  His  completed  histories,  in 
their  order,  are  "The  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella," 
1837;  "The  Conquest  of  Mexico,"  1843— a  topic  which 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  151 

Irving  had  relinquished  to  him ;  and  "  The  Conquest  of 
Peru,"  1847.  Prescott  was  fortunate  in  being  born  to  leisure 
and  fortune,  but  he  had  difficulties  of  another  kind  to  over- 
come. He  was  nearly  blind,  and  had  to  teach  himself 
Spanish  and  look  up  authorities  through  the  help  of  others, 
and  to  write  with  a  noctograph  or  by  amanuenses. 

George  Bancroft  (1800-91)  issued  the  first  volume  of  his 
great  "History  of  the  United  States"  in  1834,  and  exactly 
half  a  century  later  the  final  volume  of  the  work,  bringing 
the  subject  down  to  1789.  Bancroft  had  studied  at  Got- 
tingen,  and  imbibed  from  the  German  historian  Heeren  the 
scientific  method  of  historical  study.  He  had  access  to 
original  sources,  in  the  nature  of  collections  and  state 
papers  in  the  governmental  archives  of  Europe,  of  which 
no  American  had  hitherto  been  able  to  avail  himself.  His 
history  in  thoroughness  of  treatment  leaves  nothing  to  be 
desired,  and  has  become  the  standard  authority  on  the  sub- 
ject. As  a  literary  performance  merely,  it  is  somewhat 
wanting  in  flavor,  Bancroft's  manner  being  heavy  and  stiff 
when  compared  with  Motley's  or  Parkman's.  The  histor- 
ian's services  to  his  country  have  been  publicly  recognized 
by  his  successive  appointments  as  secretary  of  the  navy, 
minister  to  England,  and  minister  to  Germany. 

The  greatest,  on  the  whole,  of  American  historians  was 
John  Lothrop  Motley  (1814-77),  who,  like  Bancroft,  was  a 
student  at  Gottingen  and  United  States  minister  to  England. 
His  "Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,"  1856,  and  "  History  of 
the  United  Netherlands,"  published  in  installments  from 
1861  to  1868,  equaled  Bancroft's  work  in  scientific  thorough- 
ness and  philosophic  grasp,  and  Prescott's  in  the  picturesque 
brilliancy  of  the  narrative,  while  it  excelled  them  both  in 
its  masterly  analysis  of  great  historic  characters,  reminding 
the  reader,  in  this  particular,  of  Macaulay's  figure  painting. 
The  episodes  of  the  siege  of  Antwerp  and  the  sack  of  the 


152  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

cathedral,  and  of  the  defeat  and  wreck  of  the  Spanish  Ar- 
mada, are  as  graphic  as  Prescott's  famous  description  of 
Cortez's  capture  of  the  city  of  Mexico  ;  while  the  elder  his- 
torian has  nothing  to  compare  with  Motley's  vivid  personal 
sketches  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  Philip  the  Second,  Henry  of 
Navarre,  and  William  the  Silent.  The  "  Life  of  John  of 
Barneveld,"  1874,  completed  this  series  of  studies  upon  the 
history  of  the  Netherlands,  a  theme  to  which  Motley  was 
attracted  because  the  heroic  struggle  of  the  Dutch  for  lib- 
erty offered,  in  some  respects,  a  parallel  to  the  growth  of 
political  independence  in  Anglo-Saxon  communities,  and 
especially  in  his  own  America. 

The  last  of  these  Massachusetts  historical  writers  whom 
we  shall  mention  is  Francis  Parkman  (1823-93),  whose  sub- 
ject has  the  advantage  of  being  thoroughly  American.  His 
"Oregon  Trail,"  1847,  a  series  of  sketches  of  prairie  and 
Rocky  Mountain  life,  originally  contributed  to  the  Knicker- 
bocker Magazine,  displays  his  early  interest  in  the  American 
Indians.  In  1851  appeared  his  first  historical  work,  "The 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac."  This  has  been  followed  by  the 
series  entitled  "France  and  England  in  North  America," 
the  six  successive  parts  of  which  are  as  follows  :  "  The  Pio- 
neers of  France  in  the  New  World  "  ;  "  The  Jesuits  in  North 
America  ";  "La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West " ; 
"  The  Old  B6gime  in  Canada  " ;  "Count  Frontenac  and  New 
France"  ;  and  "Montcalm  and  Wolfe."  These  narratives 
have  a  wonderful  vividness  and  a  romantic  interest  not  in- 
ferior to  Cooper's  novels.  Parkman  made  himself  personally 
familiar  with  the  scenes  which  he  described,  and  some  of 
the  best  descriptions  of  American  woods  and  waters  are  to 
be  found  in  his  histories.  If  any  fault  is  to  be  found  with 
his  books,  indeed,  it  is  that  their  picturesqueness  and  "  fine 
writing  "  are  a  little  in  excess. 

The  political  literature  of  the  years  from  1837  to  1861 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  153 

hinged  upon  the  antislavery  struggle.  In  this  "  irrepressible 
conflict  "  Massachusetts  led  the  van.  Garrison  had  written 
in  his  Liberator,  in  1830  :  "  I  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth  and 
as  uncompromising  as  justice.  I  am  in  earnest ;  I  will  not 
equivocate  ;  I  will  not  excuse  ;  I  will  not  retreat  a  single 
inch  ;  and  I  will  be  heard."  But  the  Garrisonian  abolition- 
ists remained  for  a  long  time,  even  in  the  North,  a  small 
and  despised  faction.  It  was  a  great  point  gained  when 
men  of  education  and  social  standing,  like  Wendell  Phil- 
lips (1811-84)  and  Charles  Sumner  (1811-74),  joined  them- 
selves to  the  cause.  Both  of  these  were  graduates  of  Har- 
vard and  men  of  scholarly  pursuits.  They  became  the 
representative  orators  of  the  antislavery  party,  Phillips  on 
the  platform  and  Sumner  in  the  Senate.  The  former  first 
came  before  the  public  in  his  fiery  speech,  delivered  in  Fan- 
euil  Hall  December  8,  1837,  before  a  meeting  called  to  de- 
nounce the  murder  of  Lovejoy,  who  had  been  killed  at 
Alton,  111.,  while  defending  his  press  against  a  pro-slavery 
mob.  Thenceforth  Phillips's  voice  was  never  idle  in  behalf 
of  the  slave.  His  eloquence  was  impassioned  and  direct, 
and  his  English  singularly  pure,  simple,  and  nervous. 
He  is  perhaps  nearer  to  Demosthenes  than  any  other 
American  orator.  He  was  a  most  fascinating  platform 
speaker  on  themes  outside  of  politics,  and  his  lecture  on 
"The  Lost  Arts"  was  a  favorite  with  audiences  of  all 
sorts. 

Sumner  was  a  man  of  intellectual  tastes,  who  entered 
politics  reluctantly  and  only  in  obedience  to  the  resistless 
leading  of  his  conscience.  He  was  a  student  of  literature 
and  art ;  a  connoisseur  of  engravings,  for  example,  of  which 
he  made  a  valuable  collection.  He  was  fond  of  books,  con- 
versation, and  foreign  travel,  and  in  Europe,  while  still  a 
young  man,  had  made  a  remarkable  impression  in  society. 
But  he  left  all  this  for  public  life,  and  in  1851  was  elected  as 


154  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Webster's  successor  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States. 
Thereafter  he  remained  the  leader  of  the  abolitionists  in 
Congress  until  slavery  was  abolished.  His  influence 
throughout  the  North  was  greatly  increased  by  the  brutal 
attack  upon  him  in  the  Senate  chamber  in  1856  by  "  Bully 
Brooks  "  of  South  Carolina.  Sumner's  oratory  was  stately 
and  somewhat  labored.  While  speaking  he  always  seemed, 
as  has  been  wittily  said,  to  be  surveying  a  "  broad  land- 
scape of  his  own  convictions."  His  most  impressive  quali- 
ties as  a  speaker  were  his  intense  moral  earnestness  and  his 
thorough  knowledge  of  his  subject.  The  most  telling  of 
his  parliamentary  speeches  are  perhaps  his  speech  "  On  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,"  of  February  3,  1854,  and  "  On  the 
Crime  against  Kansas,"  May  19  and  20,  1856 ;  of  his  plat- 
form addresses,  the  oration  on  "The  True  Grandeur  of 
Nations." 

1.  HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW  :    "  Voices  of  the 
Night";  "The  Skeleton  in  Armor";  "  The  Wreck  of  the 
Hesperus";  "  The  Village  Blacksmith";  "The  Belfry  of 
Bruges,  and  Other  Poems"  (1846);  "  By  the  Seaside  ";  "  Hia- 
watha"; "  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn." 

2.  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES.    I.    Prose  :  "Autocrat  of 
the  Breakfast  Table";  "Elsie  Venner."     II.  Verse:  "Old 
Ironsides";  "The  Last  Leaf";  "My  Aunt";  "The  Music- 
Grinders";  "On  Lending  a  Punch-Bowl";    "Nux  Post- 
coanatica  ";  "A  Modest  Request ";  "  The  Living  Temple  "  ; 
"  Meeting  of  the  Alumni  of  Harvard  College  ";  "  Homesick 
in  Heaven";  "Epilogue  to  the  Breakfast  Table  Series"; 
"The  Boys";   "  Dorothy  Q.";  "  The  Iron  Gate." 

3.  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.    I.  Verse  :     "  The  Biglow 
Papers"  (two  series);    "Under    the  Willows   and   Other 
Poems  "  (1868);  "  Rhoecus  "  ;  "  The  Shepherd  of  King  Ad- 
metus";    "The  Vision  of  Sir    Launfal";    "The  Present 


The  Cambridge  Scholars.  155 

Crisis";  "  The  Dandelion  »;  "The  Birch  Tree";  "Beaver 
Brook."  II.  Prose:  "Chaucer";  "Shakespeare  Once 
More";  "  Dry  den"  ;  "Emerson,  the  Lecturer";  "  Tho- 
reau";  "My  Garden  Acquaintance";  "A  Good  Word  for 
Winter";  "A  Certain  Condescension  in  Foreigners"; 
"  Democracy." 

4.  WILLIAM  HICKLING  PRESCOTT:    "The  Conquest  of 
Mexico." 

5.  JOHN  LOTHBOP  MOTLEY:    "  The  United  Netherlands." 

6.  FRANCIS  PARKMAN:     "The    Oregon   Trail";  "The 
Jesuits  in  North  America." 

7.  "Representative    American    Orations,"     volume    V. 
Edited  by  Alexander  Johnston.    New  York  :  1884. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES  —1837-1861. 

LITERATURE  as  a  profession  has  hardly  existed  in  the 
United  States  until  very  recently.  Even  now  the  number 
of  those  who  support  themselves  by  purely  literary  work  is 
small,  although  the  growth  of  the  reading  public  and  the 
establishment  of  great  magazines,  such  as  Harper's,  The 
Century,  and  The  Atlantic,  have  made  a  market  for  intel- 
lectual wares  which  forty  years  ago  would  have  seemed  a 
godsend  to  poorly  paid  Bohemians  like  Poe  or  obscure  men 
of  genius  like  Hawthorne.  About  1840,  two  Philadelphia 
magazines — Godey's  Lady's  Book  and  Graham's  Monthly — 
began  to  pay  their  contributors  twelve  dollars  a  page,  a  price 
then  thought  wildly  munificent.  But  the  first  magazine  of 
the  modern  type  was  Harper's  Monthly,  founded  in  1850. 
Until  1891  American  books  suffered  from  the  want  of  an 
international  copyright,  which  flooded  the  country  with 
cheap  reprints  and  translations  of  foreign  works,  with 
which  the  domestic  product  was  unable  to  contend  on  such 
uneven  terms.  With  the  first  ocean  steamers  there  started 
up  a  class  of  large-paged  weeklies  in  New  York  and  else- 
where, such  as  Brother  Jonathan,  The  New  World,  and  The 
Corsair,  which  furnished  their  readers  with  the  freshest 
writings  of  Dickens  and  Bulwer  and  other  British  celebrities 
within  a  fortnight  after  their  appearance  in  London.  This 
still  further  restricted  the  profits  of  native  authors  and 
nearly  drove  them  from  the  field  of  periodical  literature. 
By  special  arrangement  the  novels  of  Thackeray  and  other 
English  writers  were  printed  in  Harper's  in  installments 

156 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  157 

simultaneously  with  their  issue  in  English  periodicals. 
The  Atlantic  was  the  first  of  our  magazines  which  was 
founded  expressly  for  the  encouragement  of  home  talent, 
and  which  had  a  purely  Yankee  flavor.  Journalism  was 
the  profession  which  naturally  attracted  men  of  letters,  as 
having  most  in  common  with  their  chosen  work  and  as 
giving  them  a  medium,  under  their  own  control,  through 
which  they  could  address  the  public.  A  few  favored  schol- 
ars, like  Prescott,  were  made  independent  by  the  possession 
of  private  fortunes.  Others,  like  Holmes,  Longfellow,  and 
Lowell,  gave  to  literature  such  leisure  as  they  could  get  in 
the  intervals  of  an  active  profession  or  of  college  work. 
Still  others,  like  Emerson  and  Thoreau,  by  living  in  the 
country  and  making  their  modest  competence — eked  out  in 
Emerson's  case  by  lecturing  here  and  there — suffice  for  their 
simple  needs,  secured  themselves  freedom  from  the  restraints 
of  any  regular  calling.  But,  in  default  of  some  such  pou 
sto,  our  men  of  letters  have  usually  sought  the  cities  and 
allied  themselves  with  the  press.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  Lowell  started  a  short-lived  magazine  on  his  own  ac- 
count, and  that  he  afterward  edited  The  Atlantic  and  The 
North  American.  Also  that  Ripley  and  Charles  A.  Dana 
betook  themselves  to  journalism  after  the  break-up  of  the 
Brook  Farm  Community. 

In  the  same  way  William  Cullen  Bryant  (1794-1878),  the 
earliest  American  poet  of  importance,  whose  impulses  drew 
him  to  the  solitudes  of  nature,  was  compelled  to  gain  a 
livelihood  by  conducting  a  daily  newspaper  ;  or,  as  he  him- 
self puts  it,  was 

"  Forced  to  drudge  for  the  dregs  of  men, 
And  scrawl  strange  words  with  the  barbarous  pen." 

Bryant  was  born  at  Cummington,  Massachusetts.  After  two 
years  in  Williams  College  he  studied  law,  and  practiced  for 
nine  years  as  a  country  lawyer  in  Plainfleld  and  Great  Bar- 


158  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

rington.  Following  the  line  of  the  Housatonic  Valley,  the 
social  and  theological  affiliations  of  Berkshire  have  always 
been  closer  with  Connecticut  and  New  York  than  with  Bos- 
ton and  eastern  Massachusetts.  Accordingly,  when  in  1825 
Bryant  yielded  to  the  attractions  of  a  literary  career,  he  be- 
took himself  to  New  York  City,  where,  after  a  brief  experi- 
ment in  conducting  a  monthly  magazine,  the  New  York 
Review  and  Athenaeum,  he  assumed  the  editorship  of  the 
Evening  Post,  a  Democratic  and  free-trade  journal,  with 
which  he  remained  connected  till  his  death.  He  already 
had  a  reputation  as  a  poet  when  he  entered  the  ranks  of 
metropolitan  journalism.  In  1816  his  "  Thanatopsis  "  had 
been  published  in  the  North  American  Review,  and  had  at- 
tracted immediate  and  general  admiration.  It  had  been 
finished,  indeed,  two  years  before,  when  the  poet  was  only 
in  his  nineteenth  year,  and  was  a  wonderful  instance  of 
precocity.  The  thought  in  this  stately  hymn  was  not  that 
of  a  young  man,  but  of  a  sage  who  has  reflected  long  upon 
the  universality,  the  necessity,  and  the  majesty  of  death. 
Bryant's  blank  verse  when  at  its  best,  as  in  "Thanatopsis" 
and  the  "Forest  Hymn,"  is  extremely  noble.  In  gravity 
and  dignity  it  is  surpassed  by  no  English  blank  verse  of 
this  century,  though  in  rich  and  various  modulation  it  falls 
below  Tennyson's  "Ulysses"  and  "  Morte  d' Arthur."  It 
was  characteristic  of  Bryant's  limitations  that  he  came  thus 
early  into  possession  of  his  faculty.  His  range  was  always 
a  narrow  one,  and  about  his  poetry,  as  a  whole,  there  is  a 
certain  coldness,  rigidity,  and  solemnity.  His  fixed  position 
among  American  poets  is  described  in  his  own  "  Hymn  to 
the  North  Star": 

"  And  thou  dost  see  them  rise, 
Star  of  the  pole !  and  thou  dost  see  them  set. 

Alone,  in  thy  cold  skies, 
Thou  keep'st  thy  old,  unmoving  station  yet, 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  159 

Nor  join'st  the  dances  of  that  glittering  train, 

Nor  dipp'st  thy  virgin  orb  in  the  blue  western  main." 

In  1821  he  read  "The  Ages,"  a  didactic  poem,  in  thirty- 
five  stanzas,  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  in  the  same  year  brought  out  his  first  volume 
of  poems.  A  second  collection  appeared  in  1832,  which  was 
printed  in  London  under  the  auspices  of  Washington 
Irving.  Bryant  was  the  first  American  poet  who  had  much 
of  an  audience  in  England,  and  Wordsworth  is  said  to  have 
learned  "  Thanatopsis  "  by  heart.  Bryant  was,  indeed,  in 
a  measure,  a  scholar  of  Wordsworth's  school,  and  his 
place  among  American  poets  corresponds  roughly,  though 
not  precisely,  to  Wordsworth's  among  English  poets.  With 
no  humor,  with  somewhat  restricted  sympathies,  with  little 
flexibility  or  openness  to  new  impressions,  but  gifted  with 
a  high,  austere  imagination,  Bryant  became  the  meditative 
poet  of  nature.  His  best  poems  are  those  in  which  he 
draws  lessons  from  nature,  or  sings  of  its  calming,  purify- 
ing, and  bracing  influences  upon  the  human  soul.  His  of- 
fice, in  other  words,  is  the  same  which  Matthew  Arnold 
asserts  to  be  the  peculiar  office  of  modern  poetry,  "the 
moral  interpretation  of  nature."  Poems  of  this  class  are 
"  Green  Kiver,"  "  To  a  Waterfowl,"  "  June,"  "  The  Death 
of  the  Flowers,"  and  "  The  Evening  Wind."  The  song, 
"  O  fairest  of  the  rural  maids,"  which  has  more  fancy  than 
is  common  in  Bryant,  and  which  Poe  pronounced  his  best 
poem,  has  an  obvious  resemblance  to  Wordsworth's  "  Three 
years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower,"  and  both  of  these  name- 
less pieces  might  fitly  be  entitled — as  Wordsworth's  is  in 
Mr.  Palgrave's  "Golden  Treasury" — "The  Education  of 
Nature." 

Although  Bryant's  career  is  identified  with  New  York 
his  poetry  is  all  of  New  England.  His  heart  was  always 
turning  back  fondly  to  the  woods  and  streams  of  the  Berk- 


160  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

shire  Hills.  There  was  nothing  of  that  urban  strain  in  him 
which  appears  in  Holmes  and  Willis.  He  was,  in  especial, 
the  poet  of  autumn,  of  the  American  October  and  the  New 
England  Indian  Summer,  that  season  of  "  dropping  nuts" 
and  "  smoky  light,"  to  whose  subtle  analogy  with  the  de- 
cay of  the  young  by  the  New  England  disease,  consump- 
tion, he  gave  such  tender  expression  in  "  The  Death  of  the 
Flowers,"  and  amid  whose  "bright,  late  quiet"  he  wished 
himself  to  pass  away.  Bryant  is  our  poet  of  "the  melan- 
choly days,"  as  Lowell  is  of  June.  If,  by  chance,  he  touches 
upon  June,  it  is  not  with  the  exultant  gladness  of  Lowell 
in  meadows  full  of  bobolinks,  and  in  the  summer  day 

that  is 

"  simply  perfect  from  its  own  resource, 
As  to  the  bee  the  new  campanula's 
Illuminate  seclusion  swung  in  air." 

Rather,  the  stir  of  new  life  in  the  clod  suggests  to  Bryant 
by  contrast  the  thought  of  death  ;  and  there  is  nowhere  in 
his  poetry  a  passage  of  deeper  feeling  than  the  closing 
stanzas  of  "June,"  in  which  he  speaks  of  himself  by  antici- 
pation, as  of  one 

"  Whose  part  in  all  the  pomp  that  fills 
The  circuit  of  the  summer  hills 
Is — that  his  grave  is  green." 

Bryant  is,  par  excellence,  the  poet  of  New  England  wild 
flowers,  the  yellow  violet,  the  fringed  gentian — to  each  of 
which  he  dedicated  an  entire  poem — the  orchis  and  the 
golden-rod,  "  the  aster  in  the  wood  and  the  yellow  sun- 
flower by  the  brook."  With  these  his  name  will  be  asso- 
ciated as  Wordsworth's  with  the  daffodil  and  the  lesser 
celandine,  and  Emerson's  with  the  rhodora. 

Except  when  writing  of  nature  he  was  apt  to  be  common- 
place, and  there  are  not  many  such  energetic  lines  in  his 
purely  reflective  verse  as  these  famous  ones  from  "  The 
Battle-Field": 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  161 

"  Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again ; 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers  ; 

But  Error,  wounded,  writhes  in  pain, 

And  dies  among  his  worshipers." 

He  added  but  slowly  to  the  number  of  his  poems,  publish- 
ing a  new  collection  in  1840,  another  in  1844,  and  "Thirty 
Poems  "  in  1804.  His  work  at  all  ages  was  remarkably  even. 
"  Thanatopsis  "  was  as  mature  as  anything  that  he  wrote 
afterward,  and  among  his  later  pieces  "  The  Planting  of  the 
Apple-tree"  and  "The  Flood  of  Years  "  were  as  fresh  as 
anything  that  he  had  written  in  the  first  flush  of  youth. 
Bryant's  poetic  style  was  always  pure  and  correct,  without 
any  tincture  of  affectation  or  extravagance.  His  prose  writ- 
ings are  not  important,  consisting  mainly  of  papers  of  the 
"  Salmagundi "  variety  contributed  to  The  Talisman,  an  an- 
nual published  in  1827-30 ;  some  rather  sketchy  stories, 
"Tales  of  the  Glauber  Spa,"  1832;  and  impressions  of 
Europe,  entitled  "  Letters  of  a  Traveler,"  issued  in  two 
series,  in  1849  and  1858.  In  1869  and  1871  appeared  his 
blank-verse  translations  of  the  "Iliad"  and  "Odyssey,"  a 
remarkable  achievement  for  a  man  of  his  age,  and  not  ex- 
celled, upon  the  whole,  by  any  recent  metrical  version  of 
Homer  in  the  English  tongue.  Bryant's  half-century  of 
service  as  the  editor  of  a  daily  paper  should  not  be  over- 
looked. The  Evening  Post,  under  his  management,  was 
always  honest,  gentlemanly,  and  courageous,  and  did  much 
to  raise  the  tone  of  journalism  in  N"ew  York. 

Another  Massachusetts  poet,  who  was  outside  the  Boston 
coterie,  like  Bryant,  and,  like  him,  tried  his  hand  at  jour- 
nalism, was  John  Greenleaf  Whittier  (1807-92).  He  was 
born  in  a  solitary  farm-house  near  Haverhill,  in  the  valley 
of  the  Merrimack,  and  his  life  was  passed  mostly  at  his  native 
place  and  at  the  neighboring  town  of  Amesbury.  The  local 
color,  which  is  very  pronounced  in  his  poetry,  is  that  of  the 
Merrimack  from  the  vicinity  of  Haverhill  to  its  mouth  at 


162  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Newburyport,  a  region  of  hillside  farms,  opening  out  below 
into  wide  marshes—"  the  low,  green  prairies  of  the  sea" — 
and  the  beaches  of  Hampton  and  Salisbury.  The  scenery 
of  the  Merrimack  is  familiar  to  all  readers  of  Whittier  :  the 
cotton-spinning  towns  along  its  banks,  with  their  factories 
and  dams,  the  sloping  pastures  and  orchards  of  the  back 
country,  the  sands  of  Plum  Island  and  the  level  reaches  of 
water  meadow  between  which  glide  the  broad-sailed  "  gun- 
dalows" — a  local  corruption  of  gondola — laden  with  hay. 
Whittier  was  a  farmer  lad,  and  had  only  such  education  as 
the  district  school  could  supply,  supplemented  by  two  years 
at  the  Haverhill  Academy.  In  his  "  School  Days  "  he  gives 
a  picture  of  the  little  old  country  schoolhouse  as  it  used  to 
be,  the  only  alma  -mater  of  so  many  distinguished  Ameri- 
cans, and  to  which  many  others  who  have  afterward  trod- 
den the  pavements  of  great  universities  look  back  so  fondly, 
as  to  their  first  wicket  gate  into  the  land  of  knowledge. 

"  Still  sits  the  schoolhouse  by  the  road, 

A  ragged  beggar  sunning  ; 
Around  it  still  the  sumachs  grow 

And  blackberry  vines  are  running. 

"  Within  the  master's  desk  is  seen, 

Deep-scarred  by  raps  official ; 
The  warping  floor,  the  battered  seats, 

The  jack-knife's  carved  initial." 

A  copy  of  Burns  awoke  the  slumbering  instincts  in  the 
young  poet,  and  he  began  to  contribute  verses  to  Garrison's 
Free  Press,  published  in  Newburyport,  and  to  the  Haverhill 
Gazette.  Then  he  went  to  Boston,  and  became  editor  for  a 
short  time  of  the  Manufacturer.  Next  he  edited  the  Essex 
Gazette,  at  Haverhill,  and  in  1830  he  took  charge  of  George 
D.  Prentice's  paper,  the  New  England  Weekly  Revietv,  at 
Hartford,  Conn.  Here  he  fell  in  with  a  young  Connecticut 
poet  of  much  promise,  J.  G.  C.  Brainard,  editor  of  the  Con- 
necticut Mirror,  whose  "Remains"  Whittier  edited  in  1832. 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  163 

At  Hartford,  too,  he  published  his  first  book,  a  volume  of 
prose  and  verse,  entitled  "Legends  of  New  England,"  1831, 
which  is  not  otherwise  remarkable  than  as  showing  his 
early  interest  in  Indian  colonial  traditions — especially  those 
which  had  a  touch  of  the  supernatural,— a  mine  which  he 
afterward  worked  to  good  purpose  in  "  The  Bridal  of  Pen- 
nacook,"  "The  Witch's  Daughter,"  and  similar  poems. 
Some  of  the  legends  testify  to  Brainard's  influence  and  to 
the  influence  of  Whittier's  temporary  residence  at  Hartford. 
One  of  the  prose  pieces,  for  example,  deals  with  the  famous 
"Moodus  Noises"  at  Haddam,  on  the  Connecticut  River, 
and  one  of  the  poems  is  the  same  in  subject  with  Brainard's 
"  Black  Fox  of  Salmon  River."  After  a  year  and  a  half  at 
Hartford  Whittier  returned  to  Haverhill  and  to  farming. 

The  antislavery  agitation  was  now  beginning,  and  into 
this  he  threw  himself  with  all  the  ardor  of  his  nature.  He 
became  the  poet  of  the  reform,  as  Garrison  was  its  apostle 
and  Sumner  and  Phillips  its  speakers.  In  1833  he  published 
"Justice  and  Expediency,"  a  prose  tract  against  slavery, 
and  in  the  same  year  he  took  part  in  the  formation  of  the 
American  Autislavery  Society  at  Philadelphia,  sitting  in 
the  convention  as  a  delegate  of  the  Boston  abolitionists. 
Whittier  was  a  Quaker,  and  that  denomination,  influenced 
by  the  preaching  of  John  Woolman  and  others,  had  long 
since  quietly  abolished  slavery  within  its  own  communion. 
The  Quakers  of  Philadelphia  and  elsewhere  took  an  earnest 
though  peaceful  part  in  the  Garrisonian  movement.  But  it 
was  a  strange  irony  of  fate  that  had  made  the  fiery-hearted 
Whittier  a  Friend.  His  poems  against  slavery  and  disunion 
have  the  martial  ring  of  aTyrtseusora  Korner,  added  to  the 
stern  religious  zeal  of  Cromwell's  Ironsides.  They  are  like 
the  sound  of  the  trumpet  blown  before  the  walls  of  Jericho, 
or  the  psalms  of  David  denouncing  woe  upon  the  enemies 
of  God's  chosen  people.  If  there  is  any  purely  Puritan 


164  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

strain  in  American  poetry  it  is  in  the  war  hymns  of  the 
Quaker  "  Hermit  of  Amesbury."  Of  these  patriotic  poems 
there  were  three  principal  collections:  "Voices  of  Free- 
dom," 1849  ;  "  The  Panorama,  and  Other  Poems,"  1&56  ;  and 
"  In  War  Time,"  1863.  Whittier's  work  as  the  poet  of  free- 
dom was  done  when,  on  hearing  the  bells  ring  for  the  pas- 
sage of  the  constitutional  amendment  abolishing  slavery,  he 
wrote  his  splendid  "  Laus  Deo,"  thrilling  with  the  ancient 
Hebrew  spirit : 

"  Loud  and  long 
Lift  the  old  exulting  song, 
Sing  with  Miriam  by  the  sea — 
He  has  cast  the  mighty  down, 

Horse  and  rider  sink  and  drown, 
He  hath  triumphed  gloriously." 

Of  his  poems  distinctly  relating  to  the  events  of  the  Civil 
War,  the  best,  or  at  all  events  the  most  popular,  is  ' '  Barbara 
Frietchie."  "  Ichabod,"  expressing  the  indignation  of  the 
Free  Soilers  at  Daniel  Webster's  seventh  of  March  speech 
in  defense  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  is  one  of  Whittier's 
best  political  poems,  and  not  altogether  unworthy  of  com- 
parison with  Browning's  "  Lost  Leader."  The  language  of 
Whittier's  warlike  lyrics  is  biblical,  and  many  of  his  purely 
devotional  pieces  are  religious  poetry  of  a  high  order  and 
have  been  included  in  numerous  collections  of  hymns.  Of 
his  songs  of  faith  and  doubt,  the  best  are  perhaps  "  Our 
Master,"  "Chapel  of  the  Hermits,"  and  " Eternal  Good- 
ness ";  one  stanza  from  the  last  of  which  is  familiar  : 

"  I  know  not  where  his  islands  lift 

Their  trended  palms  in  air, 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  his  love  and  care." 

But  from  politics  and  war  Whittier  turned  gladly  to 
sing  the  homely  life  of  the  New  England  country-side.  His 
rural  ballads  and  idyls  are  as  genuinely  American  as  any- 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  165 

thing  that  our  poets  have  written,  and  have  been  recom- 
mended, as  such,  to  English  workingmen  by  Whittier's  co- 
religionist, John  Bright.  The  most  popular  of  these  is 
probably  "  Maud  Muller,"  whose  closing  couplet  has  passed 
into  proverb.  "  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride  "  is  also  very  current. 
Better  than  either  of  them,  as  poetry,  is  "  Telling  the  Bees." 
But  Whittier's  masterpiece  in  work  of  a  descriptive  and 
reminiscent  kind  is  "Snow-Bound,"  1866,  a  New  England 
fireside  idyl  which,  in  its  truthfulness,  recalls  the  "Winter 
Evening"  of  Cowper's  "Task"  and  Burns's  "Cotter's 
Saturday  Night,"  but  in  sweetness  and  animation  is  su- 
perior to  either  of  them.  Although  in  some  things  a  Puri- 
tan of  the  Puritans,  Whittier  has  never  forgotten  that  he  is 
also  a  Friend,  and  several  of  his  ballads  and  songs  have  been 
upon  the  subject  of  the  early  Quaker  persecutions  in  Massa- 
chusetts. The  most  impressive  of  these  is  "Cassandra  South- 
wick."  The  latest  of  them,  "  The  King's  Missive,"  origi- 
nally contributed  to  the  "  Memorial  History  of  Boston  "  in 
1880,  and  reprinted  the  next  year  in  a  volume  with  other 
poems,  has  been  the  occasion  of  a  rather  lively  controversy. 
"The  Bridal  of  Pennacook,"  1848,  and  "  The  Tent  on  the 
Beach,"  1867,  which  contain  some  of  his  best  work,  were 
series  of  ballads  told  by  different  narrators,  after  the  fashion 
of  Longfellow's  "  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn."  As  an  artist  in 
verse,  Whittier  is  strong  and  fervid,  rather  than  delicate 
or  rich.  He  uses  only  a  few  metrical  forms — by  preference 
the  eight-syllabled  rhyming  couplet — 

"  Maud  Muller  on  a  summer's  day 
Raked  the  meadow  sweet'  with  hay," 

and  the  emphatic  tramp  of  this  measure  becomes  very  mo- 
notonous, as  do  some  of  Whittier's  mannerisms,  which  pro- 
ceed, however,  never  from  affectation,  but  from  a  lack  of 
study  and  variety,  and  so,  no  doubt,  in  part  from  the  want 
of  that  academic  culture  and  thorough  technical  equipment 


166  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

which  Lowell  and  Longfellow  enjoyed.  Though  his  poems 
are  not  in  dialect,  like  Lowell's  "  Biglow  Papers,"  he  knows 
how  to  make  an  artistic  use  of  homely  provincial  words, 
such  as  "  chore,"  which  give  his  idyls  of  the  hearth  and  the 
barnyard  a  genuine  Doric  cast.  Whittier's  prose  is  inferior 
to  his  verse.  The  fluency  which  was  a  besetting  sin  of  his 
poetry,  when  released  from  the  fetters  of  rhyme  and  meter, 
ran  into  wordiness.  His  prose  writings  were  partly  contri- 
butions to  the  slavery  controversy,  partly  biographical 
sketches  of  English  and  American  reformers,  and  partly 
studies  of  the  scenery  and  folk-lore  of  the  Merrimack  Val- 
ley. Those  of  most  literary  interest  were  the  "  Supernatur- 
alism  of  New  England,"  1847,  and  some  of  the  papers  in 
"  Literary  Recreations  and  Miscellanies,"  1854. 

While  Massachusetts  was  creating  an  American  literature, 
other  sections  of  the  Union  were  by  no  means  idle.  The 
West,  indeed,  was  as  yet  too  raw  to  add  anything  of  im- 
portance to  the  artistic  product  of  the  country.  The  South 
was  hampered  by  circumstances  which  will  presently  be  de- 
scribed. But  in  and  about  the  seaboard  cities  of  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and  Richmond  many  pens  were 
busy  filling  the  columns  of  literary  weeklies  and  monthlies  ; 
and  there  was  a  considerable  output,  such  as  it  was,  of 
books  of  poetry,  fiction,  travel,  and  miscellaneous  light 
literature.  Time  has  already  relegated  most  of  these  to  the 
dusty  top  shelves.  To  rehearse  the  names  of  the  numerous 
contributors  to  the  old  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  to  Godey^s 
and  Graham's  and  the  New  Mirror,  and  the  Southern  Liter- 
ary Messenger,  or  to  run  over  the  list  of  authorlings  and 
poetasters  in  Poe's  papers  on  the  "  Literati  of  New  York," 
would  be  very  much  like  reading  the  inscriptions  on  the 
headstones  of  an  old  graveyard.  In  the  columns  of  these 
prehistoric  magazines  and  in  the  book  notices  and  reviews 
away  back  in  the  thirties  and  forties,  one  encounters  the 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  167 

handiwork  and  the  names  of  Emerson,  Holmes,  Longfellow, 
Hawthorne,  and  Lowell  embodied  in  this  mass  of  forgotten 
literature.  It  would  have  required  a  good  deal  of  critical 
acumen,  at  the  time,  to  predict  that  these  and  a  few  others 
would  soon  be  thrown  out  into  bold  relief,  as  the  significant 
and  permanent  names  in  the  literature  of  their  generation, 
while  Paulding,  Hirst,  Fay,  Dawes,  Mrs.  Osgood,  and  scores 
of  others  who  figured  beside  them  in  the  fashionable  period- 
icals, and  filled  quite  as  large  a  space  in  the  public  eye, 
would  sink  into  oblivion  in  less  than  thirty  years.  Some 
of  these  latter  were  clever  enough  people  ;  they  entertained 
their  contemporary  public  sufficiently,  but  their  work  had 
no  vitality  or  "power  of  continuance."  The  great  majority 
of  the  writings  of  any  period  are  necessarily  ephemeral, 
and  time  by  a  slow  process  of  natural  selection  is  constantly 
sifting  out  the  few  representative  books  which  shall  carry 
on  the  memory  of  the  period  to  posterit}'.  Now  and  then 
it  may  be  predicted  of  some  undoubted  work  of  genius, 
even  at  the  moment  that  it  sees  the  light,  that  it  is  destined 
to  endure.  But  tastes  and  fashions  change,  and  few  things 
are  better  calculated  to  inspire  the  literary  critic  with  hu- 
mility than  to  read  the  prophecies  in  old  reviews  and  see 
how  the  future,  now  become  the  present,  has  quietly  given 
them  the  lie. 

From  among  the  professional  litterateurs  of  his  day 
emerges,  with  ever  sharper  distinctness  as  time  goes  on,  the 
name  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  (1809-49).  By  the  irony  of  fate 
Poe  was  born  at  Boston,  and  his  first  volume,  "  Tamerlane, 
and  Other  Poems,"  1827,  was  printed  in  that  city  and  bore 
upon  its  title-page  the  words,  "  By  a  Bostonian."  But  his 
parentage,  so  far  as  it  was  anything,  was  southern.  His 
father  was  a  Marylander  who  had  gone  upon  the  stage  and 
married  an  actress,  herself  the  daughter  of  an  actress  and  a 
native  of  England.  Left  an  orphan  by  the  early  death  of 


168  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

both  parents,  Poe  was  adopted  by  a  Mr.  Allan,  a  wealthy 
merchant  of  Richmond,  Va.  He  was  educated  partly  at  an 
English  school,  was  student  for  a  time  in  the  University  of 
Virginia,  and  afterward  a  cadet  in  the  Military  Academy  at 
West  Point.  His  youth  was  wild  and  irregular  :  he  gam- 
bled and  drank ;  was  proud,  bitter,  and  perverse  ;  finally 
quarreled  with  his  guardian  and  adopted  father — by  whom 
he  was  disowned — and  then  betook  himself  to  the  life  of  a 
literary  hack.  His  brilliant  but  underpaid  work  for  various 
periodicals  soon  brought  him  into  notice,  and  he  was  given 
the  editorship  of  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  published 
at  Richmond,  and  subsequently  of  the  Gentlemen's — after- 
ward Graham's — Magazine  in  Philadelphia.  These  and 
all  other  positions  Poe  forfeited  through  his  dissipated  hab- 
its and  wayward  temper,  and  finally,  in  1844,  he  drifted  to 
N"ew  York,  where  he  found  employment  on  the  Evening 
Mirror  and  then  on  the  Broadway  Journal.  He  died  of  de- 
lirium tremens  at  the  Marine  Hospital  in  Baltimore.  His 
life  was  one  of  the  most  wretched  in  literary  history.  He 
was  an  extreme  instance  of  what  used  to  be  called  the 
"eccentricity  of  genius."  He  had  the  irritable  vanity 
which  is  popularly  supposed  to  accompany  the  poetic  tem- 
perament, and  was  so  insanely  egotistic  as  to  imagine  that 
Longfellow  and  others  were  constantly  plagiarizing  from 
him.  The  best  side  of  Poe's  character  came  out  in  his  do- 
mestic relations,  in  which  he  displayed  great  tenderness, 
patience,  and  fidelity.  His  instincts  were  gentlemanly,  and 
his  manner  and  conversation  were  often  winning.  In  the 
place  of  moral  feeling  he  had  the  artistic  conscience.  In 
his  critical  papers,  except  where  warped  by  passion  or 
prejudice,  he  showed  neither  fear  nor  favor,  denouncing  bad 
work  by  the  most  illustrious  hands  and  commending  ob- 
scure merit.  The  "  impudent  literary  cliques  "  who  puffed 
each  other's  books  ;  the  feeble  chirrupings  of  the  bardlings 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  169 

who  manufactured  verses  for  the  "Annuals";  and  the 
twaddle  of  the  "genial"  incapables  who  praised  them  in 
flabby  reviews — all  these  Poe  exposed  with  ferocious  hon- 
esty. Nor,  though  his  writings  are  immoral,  can  they  be 
called  in  any  sense  immoral.  His  poetry  is  as  pure  in  its 
unearthliness  as  Bryant's  in  its  austerity. 

By  1831  Poe  had  published  three  thin  books  of  verse, 
none  of  which  had  attracted  notice,  although  the  latest 
contained  the  drafts  of  a  few  of  his  most  perfect  poems, 
such  as  "  Tsrafel,"  "  The  Valley  of  Unrest,"  "  The  City  in 
the  Sea,"  and  one  of  the  two  pieces  inscribed  "  To  Helen." 
It  was  his  habit  to  touch  and  retouch  his  work  until  it 
grew  under  his  more  practiced  hand  into  a  shape  that 
satisfied  his  fastidious  taste.  Hence  the  same  poem  fre- 
quently reappears  in  different  stages  of  development  in 
successive  editions.  Poe  was  a  subtle  artist  in  the  realm,  of 
the  wreird  and  the  fantastic.  In  his  intellectual  nature 
there  was  a  strange  conjunction  ;  an  imagination  as  spirit- 
ual as  Shelley's,  though,  unlike  Shelley's,  haunted  perpetu- 
ally with  shapes  of  fear  and  the  imagery  of  ruin  ;  with 
this,  an  analytic  power,  a  scientific  exactness,  and  a  me- 
chanical ingenuity  more  usual  in  a  chemist  or  a  mathema- 
tician than  in  a  poet.  He  studied  carefully  the  mechanism 
of  his  verse  and  experimented  endlessly  with  verbal  and 
musical  effects,  such  as  repetition  and  monotone  and  the 
selection  of  words  in  which  the  consonants  alliterated  and 
the  vowels  varied.  In  his  "Philosophy  of  Composition  " 
he  described  how  his  best-known  poem,  "The  Raven," 
was  systematically  built  up  011  a  preconceived  plan,  in 
which  the  number  of  lines  was  first  determined  and  the 
word  "  nevermore  "  selected  as  a  starting-point.  No  one 
who  knows  the  mood  in  which  poetry  is  composed  will  be- 
lieve that  this  ingenious  piece  of  dissection  really  describes 
the  way  in  which  "  The  Raven  "  was  conceived  and  writ- 


170  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ten,  or  that  any  such  deliberate  and  self-conscious  process 
could  originate  the  associations  from  which  a  true  poem 
springs.  But  it  flattered  Poe's  pride  of  intellect  to  assert 
that  his  cooler  reason  had  control  not  only  over  the  exe- 
cution of  his  poetry,  but  over  the  very  well-head  of  thought 
and  emotion. 

Some  of  his  most  successful  stories,  like  "  The  Gold 
Bug,"  "The  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,"  "The  Purloined 
Letter,"  and  "  The  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,"  were  ap- 
plications of  this  analytic  faculty  to  the  solution  of  puz- 
zles, such  as  the  finding  of  buried  treasure  or  of  a  lost 
document,  or  the  ferreting  out  of  a  mysterious  crime. 
After  the  publication  of  "  The  Gold  Bug  "  he  received  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  specimens  of  cipher-writing,  which 
he  delighted  to  work  out.  Others  of  his  tales  were  clever 
pieces  of  mystification,  like  "Hans  Pfaall,"  the  story  of  a 
journey  to  the  moon,  or  experiments  at  giving  verisimili- 
tude to  wild  improbabilities  by  the  skilful  introduction  of 
scientific  details,  as  in  "  The  Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Valde- 
mar "  and  "Von  Kempelen's  Discovery."  In  his  narra- 
tives of  this  kind  Poe  anticipated  the  detective  novels  of 
Gaboriau  and  Wilkie  Collins,  the  scientific  hoaxes  of  Jules 
Verne,  and,  though  in  a  less  degree,  the  artfully  worked  up 
likeness  to  fact  in  Edward  Everett  Hale's  "Man  Without 
a  Country,"  and  similar  fictions.  While  Dickens's  "Barnaby 
Rudge  "  was  publishing  in  parts  Poe  showed  his  skill  as  a 
plot-hunter  by  publishing  a  paper  in  Graham's  Magazine 
in  which  the  very  tangled  intrigue  of  the  novel  was  cor- 
rectly raveled  and  the  finale  predicted  in  advance. 

In  his  union  of  imagination  and  analytic  power  Poe  re- 
sembled Coleridge,  who,  if  any  one,  was  his  teacher  in 
poetry  and  criticism.  Poe's  verse  often  reminds  one  of 
"Christabel"  and  "The  Ancient  Mariner,"  still  oftener  of 
"  Kubla  Khan."  Like  Coleridge,  too,  he  indulged  at  times 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  171 


in  the  opium  habit.  But  in  Poe  the  artist  predominated 
over  everything  else.  He  began  not  with  sentiment  or 
thought,  but  with  technique,  with  melody  and  color,  tricks 
of  language,  and  effects  of  verse.  It  is  curious  to  study  the 
growth  of  his  style  in  his  successive  volumes  of  poetry.  At 
first  these  are  metrical  experiments  and  vague  images, 
original,  and  with  a  fascinating  suggestiveness,  but  with  so 
little  meaning  that  some  of  his  earlier  pieces  are  hardly  re- 
moved from  nonsense.  Gradually,  like  distant  music  draw- 
ing nearer  and  nearer,  his  poetry  becomes  fuller  of  imagi- 
nation and  of  an  inward  significance,  without  ever  losing, 
however,  its  mysterious  aloofness  from  the  real  world  of 
the  senses.  It  was  a  part  of  Poe's  literary  creed — formed 
upon  his  own  practice  and  his  own  limitations,  but  set 
forth  with  a  great  display  of  a  priori  reasoning  in  his  essay 
on  "The  Poetic  Principle"  and  elsewhere — that  pleasure, 
and  not  instruction  or  moral  exhortation,  was  the  end  of 
poetry  ;  that  beauty,  and  not  truth  or  goodness,  was  its 
means  ;  and,  furthermore,  that  the  pleasure  which  it  gave 
should  be  indefinite.  About  his  own  poetry  there  was 
always  this  indefiniteuess.  His  imagination  dwelt  in  a 
strange  country  of  dream — a  "ghoul-haunted  region  of 
Weir,"  "out  of  space,  out  of  time" — filled  with  unsub- 
stantial landscapes  and  peopled  by  spectral  shapes.  And 
yet  there  is  a  wonderful,  hidden  significance  in.  this  un- 
canny scenery.  The  reader  feels  that  the  wild,  fantasmal 
imagery  is  in  itself  a  kind  of  language,  and  that  it  in  some 
way  expresses  a  brooding  thought  or  passion,  the  terror  and 
despair  of  a  lost  soul.  Sometimes  there  is  an  obvious  alle- 
gory, as  in  "  The  Haunted  Palace,"  which  is  the  parable  of 
a  ruined  mind,  or  in  "The  Raven,"  the  most  popular  of  all 
Poe's  poems,  originally  published  in  the  American  Whig 
Review  for  February,  1845.  Sometimes  the  meaning  is 
more  obscure,  as  in  "Ulalume,"  which,  to  most  people,  is 


172  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

quite  incomprehensible  and  yet,  to  all  readers  of  poetic 
feeling,  is  among  the  most  characteristic,  and,  therefore, 
the  most  fascinating  of  its  author's  creations. 

Now  and  then,  as  in  the  beautiful  ballad  "Annabel  Lee," 
and  "To  One  in  Paradise,"  the  poet  emerges  into  the  light 
of  common  human  feeling  and  speaks  a  more  intelligible 
language.  But  in  general  his  poetry  is  not  the  poetry  of 
the  heart,  and  its  passion  is  not  the  passion  of  flesh  and 
blood.  In  Poe  the  thought  of  death  is  always  near,  and  of 
the  shadowy  borderland  between  death  and  life. 

"  The  play  is  the  tragedy  '  Man,' 

And  its  hero  the  Conqueror  Worm." 

The  prose  tale,  "  Ligeia,"  in  which  these  verses  are  inserted, 
is  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  all  Poe's  writings,  and  its 
theme  is  the  power  of  the  will  to  overcome  death.  In  that 
singularly  impressive  poem,  "The  Sleeper,"  the  morbid 
horror  which  invests  the  tomb  springs  from  the  same  source, 
the  materiality  of  Poe's  imagination,  which  refuses  to  let 
the  soul  go  free  from  the  body. 

This  quality  explains  why  Poe's  "  Tales  of  the  Grotesque 
and  Arabesque,"  1840,  are  on  a  lower  plane  than  Hawthorne's 
romances,  to  which  a  few  of  them,  like  "  William  Wilson  " 
and  "The  Man  of  the  Crowd,"  have  some  resemblance. 
The  former  of  these,  in  particular,  is  in  Hawthorne's  pecu- 
liar province,  the  allegory  of  the  conscience.  But  in  gen- 
eral the  tragedy  in  Hawthorne  is  a  spiritual  one,  while  Poe 
calls  in  the  aid  of  material  forces.  The  passion  of  physical 
fear  or  of  superstitious  horror  is  that  which  his  writings 
most  frequently  excite.  These  tales  represent  various  grades 
of  the  frightful  and  the  ghastly,  from  the  mere  bugaboo 
story  like  "The  Black  Cat,"  which  makes  children  afraid 
to  go  in  the  dark,  up  to  the  breathless  terror  of  "  The  Cask 
of  Amontillado  "  or  "  The  Red  Death."  Poe's  masterpiece 
in  this  kind  is  the  fateful  tale  of  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  173 

Usher,"  with  its  solemn  and  magnificent  close.  His  prose, 
at  its  best,  often  recalls,  in  its  richly  imaginative  cast,  the 
manner  of  De  Quincey  in  such  passages  as  his  "  Dream 
Fugue  "  or  "  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow."  In  descriptive  pieces 
like  "  The  Domain  of  Arnheim,"  and  stories  of  adventure 
like  "  The  Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,"  and  his  long  sea- 
tale,  "  The  Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon  Pym,"  1838,  he  dis- 
played a  realistic  inventiveness  almost  equal  to  Swift's  or 
De  Foe's.  He  was  not  without  a  mocking  irony,  but  he 
had  no  constructive  humor,  and  his  attempts  at  the  facetious 
were  mostly  failures. 

Poe' 3  magical  creations  were  rootless  flowers.  He  took 
no  hold  upon  the  life  about  him  and  cared  nothing  for  the 
public  concerns  of  his  country.  His  poems  and  tales  might 
have  been  written  in  vacua  for  anything  American  in  them. 
Perhaps  for  this  reason,  in  part,  his  fame  has  been  so  cosmo- 
politan. In  France  especially  his  waitings  have  been  favor- 
ites. Charles  Baudelaire,  the  author  of  the  "Fleurs  de 
Mai,"  translated  them  into  French,  and  his  own  impressive 
but  unhealthy  poetry  shows  evidence  of  Poe's  influence. 
The  defect  in  Poe  was  in  character — a  defect  which  will  make 
itself  felt  in  art  as  in  life.  If  he  had  had  the  sweet  home 
feeling  of  Longfellow  or  the  moral  fervor  of  Whittier  he 
might  have  been  a  greater  poet  than  either. 

"  If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 
While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky !  " 

Though  Poe  was  a  southerner,  if  not  by  birth,  at  least  by 
race  and  breeding,  there  was  nothing  distinctly  southern 
about  his  peculiar  genius,  and  in  his  wandering  life  he  was 
associated  as  much  with  Philadelphia  and  New  York  as 


174  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

with  Baltimore  and  Richmond.  The  conditions  which  had 
made  the  southern  colonies  unfruitful  in  literary  and  educa- 
tional works  before  the  Revolution  continued  to  act  down  to 
the  time  of  the  Civil  War.  Eli  Whitney's  invention  of  the 
cotton-gin  in  the  closing  years  of  the  last  century  gave  ex- 
tension to  slavery,  making  it  profitable  to  cultivate  the  new 
staple  by  enormous  gangs  of  field-hands  working  under  the 
whip  of  the  overseer  in  large  plantations.  Slavery  became 
henceforth  a  business  speculation  in  the  states  farthest 
south,  and  not,  as  in  Old  Virginia  and  Kentucky,  a  com- 
paratively mild  domestic  system.  The  necessity  of  defend- 
ing its  peculiar  institution  against  the  attacks  of  a  growing 
faction  in  the  North  compelled  the  South  to  throw  all  its 
intellectual  strength  into  politics,  which,  for  that  matter,  is 
the  natural  occupation  and  excitement  of  a  social  aristoc- 
racy. Meanwhile  immigration  sought  the  free  states,  and 
there  was  no  middle  class  at  the  South.  The  "  poor  whites  " 
were  ignorant  and  degraded.  There  were  people  of  educa- 
tion in  the  cities  and  on  some  of  the  plantations,  but  there 
was  no  great  educated  class  from  which  a  literature  could 
proceed.  And  the  culture  of  the  South,  such  as  it  was,  was 
becoming  old-fashioned  and  local,  as  the  section  was  isolated 
more  and  more  from  the  rest  of  the  Union  and  from  the  en- 
lightened public  opinion  of  Europe  by  its  reactionary  preju- 
dices and  its  sensitiveness  on  the  subject  of  slavery. 
Nothing  can  be  imagined  more  ridiculously  provincial  than 
the  sophomorical  editorials  in  the  southern  press  just  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  or  than  the  backward  and  ill- 
informed  articles  which  passed  for  reviews  in  the  poorly 
supported  periodicals  of  the  South. 

In  the  general  dearth  of  work  of  high  and  permanent 
value,  one  or  two  southern  authors  may  be  mentioned  whose 
writings  have  at  least  done  something  to  illustrate  the  life 
and  scenery  of  their  section.  When  in  1833  the  Baltimore 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  175 

Saturday  Visitor  offered  a  prize  of  a  hundred  dollars  for  the 
best  prose  tale,  one  of  the  committee  who  awarded  the  prize 
to  Foe's  first  story,  "The  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,"  was 
John  P.  Kennedy,  a  Whig  gentleman  of  Baltimore,  who 
afterward  became  secretary  of  the  navy  in  Fillmore's  ad- 
ministration. The  year  before  he  had  published  "  Swallow 
Barn,"  a  series  of  agreeable  sketches  of  country  life  in  Vir- 
ginia. In  1835  and  1838  he  published  his  two  novels, 
"Horse-Shoe  Robinson"  and  "Rob  of  the  Bowl,"  the  for- 
mer a  story  of  the  Revolutionary  War  in  South  Carolina, 
the  latter  an  historical  tale  of  colonial  Maryland.  These 
had  sufficient  success  to  warrant  reprinting  as  late  as  18.52. 
But  the  most  popular  and  voluminous  of  all  southern 
writers  of  fiction  was  William  Gilmore  Simms,  a  South 
Carolinian,  who  died  in  1870.  He  wrote  over  thirty  novels, 
mostly  romances  of  revolutionary  history,  southern  life, 
and  wild  adventure,  among  the  best  of  which  were  "The 
Partisan,"  1835,  and  "  The  Yernassee."  Simms  was  an  in- 
ferior Cooper  with  a  difference.  His  novels  are  good  boys' 
books,  but  are  crude  and  hasty  in  composition.  He  was 
strongly  southern  in  his  sympathies,  though  his  newspaper, 
the  Charleston  City  Gazette,  took  part  against  the  nullifiers. 
His  miscellaneous  writings  include  several  histories  and  bi- 
ographies, political  tracts,  addresses,  and  critical  papers  con- 
tributed to  southern  magazines.  He  also  wrote  numerous 
poems,  the  most  ambitious  of  which  was  "Atlantis,  a  Story 
of  the  Sea,"  1832.  His  poems  have  little  value  except  as 
here  and  there  illustrating  local  scenery  and  manners,  as  in 
•'  Southern  Passages  and  Pictures,"  1839.  Mr.  John  Esten 
Cooke's  pleasant  but  not  very  strong  "  Virginia  Comedians  " 
was,  perhaps,  in  literary  quality  the  best  southern  novel 
produced  before  the  Civil  War. 

When  Poe  came  to  New  York,  the  most  conspicuous  liter- 
ary figure  of  the  metropolis,  with  the  possible  exception  of 


176  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Bryant  and  Halleck,  was  N.  P.  Willis,  one  of  the  editors  of 
the  Evening  Mirror,  upon  which  journal  Poe  was  for  a  time 
engaged.  Willis  had  made  a  literary  reputation,  when  a 
student  at  Yale,  by  his  "  Scripture  Poems,"  written  in 
smooth  blank  verse.  Afterward  he  had  edited  the  American 
Monthly  in  his  native  city  of  Boston,  and  more  recently  he 
had  published  "  Pencillings  by  the  Way,"  1835,  a  pleasant 
record  of  European  saunterings  ;  "  Inklings  of  Adventure," 
1836,  a  collection  of  dashing  stories  and  sketches  of  Ameri- 
can and  foreign  life  ;  and  "  Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge," 
1839,  a  series  of  charming  rural  letters  from  his  country 
place  at  Owego,  on  the  Susquehanna.  Willis's  work,  always 
graceful  and  sparkling,  sometimes  even  brilliant,  though 
light  in  substance  and  jaunty  in  style,  had  quickly  raised 
him  to  the  summit  of  popularity.  During  the  years  from  1835 
to  1850  he  was  the  most  successful  American  magazinist,  and 
even  down  to  the  day  of  his  death,  in  1867,  he  retained  his 
hold  upon  the  attention  of  the  fashionable  public  by  his  easy 
paragraphing  and  correspondence  in  the  Mirror  and  its  suc- 
cessor, the  Home  Journal,  which  catered  to  the  literary  wants 
of  the  beau  monde.  Much  of  Willis's  work  was  ephemeral, 
though  clever  of  its  kind,  but  a  few  of  his  best  tales  and 
sketches,  such  as  "  F.  Smith,"  "  The  Ghost  Ball  at  Congress 
Hall,"  "Edith  Linsey,"  and  "The  Lunatic's  Skate,"  to- 
gether with  some  of  the  "  Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge," 
are  worthy  of  preservation,  not  only  as  readable  stories,  but 
as  society  studies  of  life  at  American  watering-places  like 
Nahant  and  Saratoga  and  Ballston  Spa  half  a  century  ago. 
A  number  of  his  simpler  poems,  like  "Unseen  Spirits," 
"Spring,"  "  To  M — from  Abroad,"  and  "Lines  on  Leaving 
Europe,"  still  retain  a  deserved  place  in  collections  and 
anthologies. 

The  senior  editor  of  the  Mirror,  George  P.  Morris,  was 
once  a  very    popular  song-writer,   and    his    "Woodman, 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  177 

Spare  that  Tree"  still  survives.  Other  residents  of  New 
York  City  who  have  written  single  famous  pieces  were 
Clement  C.  Moore,  a  professor  in  the  General  Theological 
Seminary,  whose  "Visit  from  St.  Nicholas" — "  'Twas  the 
Night  Before  Christmas,"  etc. — is  a  favorite  ballad  in  every 
nursery  in  the  land  ;  Charles  Fenno  Hoffman,  a  novelist  of 
reputation  in  his  time,  but  now  remembered  only  as  the 
author  of  the  song,  "  Sparkling  and  Bright,"  and  the  patri- 
otic ballad  of  "  Monterey  "  ;  Robert  H.  Messinger,  a  native 
of  Boston,  but  long  resident  in  New  York,  where  he  was  a 
familiar  figure  in  fashionable  society,  who  wrote  "  Give  Me 
the  Old,"  a  fine  ode  with  a  choice  Horatian  flavor  ;  and 
William  Allen  Butler,  a  lawyer  and  occasional  writer, 
whose  capital  satire  of  "  Nothing  to  Wear  "  was  published 
anonymously  and  had  a  great  run.  Of  younger  poets,  like 
Stoddard,  Stedman,  and  Aldrich  (who  formerly  wrote  for 
the  3/irror),  who  are  still  living  and  working  in  the  ma- 
turity of  their  powers,  it  is  not  within  the  limits  and 
design  of  this  sketch  to  speak.  But  one  of  their  contem- 
poraries, Bayard  Taylor,  who  died  American  minister  at 
Berlin,  in  1878,  though  a  Pennsylvanian  by  birth  and  rear- 
ing, may  be  reckoned  among  the  "  literati  of  New  York." 
A  farmer  lad  from  Chester  County,  who  had  learned  the 
printer's  trade  and  printed  a  little  volume  of  his  juvenile 
verses  in  1844,  he  came  to  New  York  shortly  after  with  cre- 
dentials from  Dr.  Griswold,  the  editor  of  Graham's ;  and 
obtaining  encouragement  and  aid  from  Willis,  Horace 
Greeley,  and  others,  he  set  out  to  make  the  tour  of  Europe, 
walking  from  town  to  town  in  Germany  and  getting  em- 
ployment now  and  then  at  his  trade  to  help  pay  the  ex- 
penses of  the  trip.  The  story  of  these  "  Wanderjahre  "  he 
told  in  his  "Views  Afoot,"  1846.  This  was  the  first  of 
eleven  books  of  travel  written  during  the  course  of  his  life. 
He  was  an  inveterate  nomad,  and  his  journeyings  carried 


178  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

him  to  the  remotest  regions — to  California,  India,  China, 
Japan,  and  the  isles  of  the  sea,  to  Central  Africa  and  the 
Soudan,  Palestine,  Egypt,  Iceland,  and  the  "byways  of 
Europe."  His  headquarters  at  home  were  in  New  York, 
where  he  did  literary  work  for  the  Tribune.  He  was  a 
rapid  and  incessant  worker,  throwing  off'  many  volumes 
of  verse  and  prose,  fiction,  essays,  sketches,  translations, 
and  criticisms,  mainly  contributed  in  the  first  instance  to 
the  magazines. 

His  versatility  was  very  marked,  and  his  poetry  ranged 
from  "Ehymes  of  Travel,"  1848,  and  "Poems  of  the 
Orient,"  1854,  to  idyls  and  home  ballads  of  Pennsylvania 
life,  like  "The  Quaker  Widow  "  and  "The  Old  Pennsyl- 
vania Farmer"  ;  and  on  the  other  side  to  ambitious  and 
somewhat  mystical  poems,  like  "  The  Masque  of  the  Gods," 
1872 — written  in  four  days, — and  dramatic  experiments  like 
"The  Prophet,"  1874,  and  "Prince  Deukalion,"  1878.  He 
was  a  man  of  buoyant  and  eager  nature,  with  a  great  appe- 
tite for  new  experience,  a  remarkable  memory,  a  talent  for 
learning  languages,  and  a  too  great  readiness  to  take  the 
hue  of  his  favorite  books.  From  his  facility,  his  openness 
to  external  impressions  of  scenery  and  costume,  and  his 
habit  of  turning  these  at  once  into  the  service  of  his  pen, 
it  results  that  there  is  something  "  newspapery  "  and  super- 
ficial about  most  of  his  prose.  It  is  reporter's  work,  though 
reporting  of  a  high  order.  His  poetry,  too,  though  full  of 
glow  and  picturesqueness,  is  largely  imitative,  suggesting 
Tennyson  not  unfrequently,  but  more  often  Shelley.  His 
spirited  "  Bedouin  Song,"  for  example,  has  an  echo  of 
Shelley's  "  Lines  to  an  Indian  Air  "  : 

"  From  the  desert  I  come  to  thee 

On  a  stallion  shod  with  fire ; 

And  the  winds  are  left  behind 

In  the  speed  of  my  desire. 
Under  thy  window  I  stand, 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  179 

And  the  midnight  hears  my  cry ; 
I  love  thee,  I  love  but  thee, 
With  a  love  that  shall  not  die." 

The  dangerous  quickness  with  which  he  caught  the  manner 
of  other  poets  made  him  an  admirable  parodist  and  transla- 
tor. His  "  Echo  Club,"  1876,  contains  some  of  the  best  trav- 
esties in  the  tongue,  and  his  great  translation  of  Goethe's 
"Faust,"  1870-71— with  its  wonderfully  close  reproduction 
of  the  original  meters  — is  one  of  the  glories  of  American 
literature.  All  in  all,  Taylor  may  unhesitatingly  be  put 
first  among  our  poets  of  the  second  generation — the  genera- 
tion succeeding  that  of  Longfellow  and  Lowell — although 
the  lack  in  him  of  original  genius  self-determined  to  a 
peculiar  sphere,  or  the  want  of  an  inward  fixity  and  con- 
centration to  resist  the  rich  tumult  of  outward  impressions, 
has  made  him  less  significant  in  the  history  of  our  literary 
thought  than  some  other  writers  less  generously  endowed. 

Taylor's  novels  had  the  qualities  of  his  verse.  They  were 
profuse,  eloquent,  and  faulty.  "  John  Godfrey's  Fortune," 
1864,  gave  a  picture  of  Bohemian  life  in  New  York.  "  Han- 
nah Thurston,"  1863,  and  "The  Story  of  Kennett,"  1866, 
introduced  many  incidents  and  persons  from  the  old  Quaker 
life  of  rural  Pennsylvania,  as  Taylor  remembered  it  in  his 
boyhood.  The  former  was  like  Hawthorne's  "  Blithedale 
Romance,"  a  satire  on  fanatics  and  reformers,  and  its  her- 
oine is  a  nobly  conceived  character,  though  drawn  with 
some  exaggeration.  "The  Story  of  Kennett,"  which  is 
largely  autobiographic,  has  a  greater  freshness  and  reality 
than  the  others,  and  is  full  of  personal  recollections.  In 
these  novels,  as  in  his  short  stories,  Taylor's  pictorial  skill 
is  greater,  on  the  whole,  than  his  power  of  creating  char- 
acters or  inventing  plots. 

Literature  in  the  West  now  began  to  have  an  existence. 
Another  young  poet  from  Chester  County,  Pa.,  namely, 


180  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Thomas  Buchanan  Read,  went  to  Cincinnati,  and  not  to 
New  York,  to  study  sculpture  and  painting,  about  1837,  and 
one  of  his  best-known  poems,  "  Pons  Maximus,"  was  writ- 
ten on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  suspension  bridge 
across  the  Ohio.  Read  came  East,  to  be  sure,  in  1841,  and 
spent  many  years  in  our  seaboard  cities  and  in  Italy.  He 
was  distinctly  a  minor  poet,  but  some  of  his  Pennsylvania 
pastorals,  like  "  The  Deserted  Road,"  have  a  natural  sweet- 
ness ;  and  his  luxurious  "Drifting,"  which  combines  the 
methods  of  painting  and  poetry,  is  justly  popular.  "  Sheri- 
dan's Ride" — perhaps  his  most  current  piece — is  a  rather 
forced  production,  and  has  been  overpraised.  The  two  Ohio 
sister  poets,  Alice  and  Phcebe  Gary,  were  attracted  to  New 
York  in  1850,  as  soon  as  their  literary  success  seemed  as- 
sured. They  made  that  city  their  home  for  the  remainder 
of  their  lives.  Poe  praised  Alice  Gary's  "  Pictures  of  Mem- 
ory," and  Phoebe's  "  Nearer  Home  "  has  become  a  favorite 
hymn.  There  is  nothing  peculiarly  western  about  the  verse 
of  the  Gary  sisters.  It  is  the  poetry  of  sentiment,  memory, 
and  domestic  affection,  entirely  feminine,  rather  tame  and 
diffuse  as  a  whole,  but  tender  and  sweet,  cherished  by  many 
good  women  and  dear  to  simple  hearts. 

A  stronger  smack  of  the  soil  is  in  the  negro  melodies  like 
"Uncle  Ned,"  "O  Susanna,"  "Old  Folks  at  Home,"  "'Way 
Down  South,"  "Nelly  was  a  Lady,"  "My  Old  Kentucky 
Home,"  etc.,  which  were  the  work,  not  of  any  southern 
poet,  but  of  Stephen  C.  Foster,  a  native  of  Allegheny,  Pa., 
and  a  resident  of  Cincinnati  and  Pittsburg.  He  composed 
the  words  and  music  of  these,  and  many  others  of  a  similar 
kind,  during  the  years  1847  to  1861.  Taken  together  they 
form  the  most  original  arid  vital  addition  which  this  country 
has  made  to  the  psalmody  of  the  world,  and  entitle  Foster 
to  the  first  rank  among  American  song-writers. 

As  Foster's  plaintive  melodies  carried  the  pathos  and  hu- 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  181 

mor  of  the  plantation  all  over  the  land,  so  Mrs.  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe's  ''Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  1852,  brought  home 
to  millions  of  readers  the  sufferings  of  the  negroes  in  the 
' '  black  belt ' '  of  the  cotton-growing  states.  This  is  the  most 
popular  novel  ever  written  in  America.  Hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of 'copies  were  sold  in  this  country  and  in  England, 
and  some  forty  translations  were  made  into  foreign  tongues. 
In  its  dramatized  form  it  still  keeps  the  stage,  and  the  sta- 
tistics of  circulating  libraries  show  that  even  now  it  is  in 
greater  demand  than  any  other  single  book.  It  did  more 
than  any  other  literary  agency  to  rouse  the  public  conscience 
to  a  sense  of  the  shame  and  horror  of  slavery  ;  more  even 
than  Garrison's  Liberator ;  more  than  the  indignant  poems 
of  Whittier  and  Lowell  or  the  orations  of  Sumner  and  Phil- 
lips. It  presented  the  thing  concretely  and  dramatically, 
and  in  particular  it  made  the  odious  Fugitive  Slave  Law 
forever  impossible  to  enforce.  It  was  useless  for  the  de- 
fenders of  slavery  to  protest  that  the  picture  was  exagger- 
ated, and  that  planters  like  Legree  were  the  exception.  The 
system  under  which  such  brutalities  could  happen,  and  did 
sometimes  happen,  was  doomed.  It  is  easy  now  to  point 
out  defects  of  taste  and  art  in  this  masterpiece,  to  show  that 
the  tone  is  occasionally  melodramatic,  that  some  of  the  char- 
acters are  conventional,  and  that  the  literary  execution  is  in 
parts  feeble  and  in  others  coarse.  In  spite  of  all,  it  remains 
true  that  u  Uncle  Tonvs  Cabin  "  is  a  great  book,  the  work 
of  genius  seizing  instinctively  upon  its  opportunity  and  ut- 
tering the  thought  of  the  time  with  a  power  that  thrilled 
the  heart  of  the  nation  and  of  the  world.  Mrs.  Stowe  never 
repeated  her  first  success.  Some  of  her  novels  of  New  Eng- 
land life,  such  as  "The  Minister's  Wooing,"  1859,  and 
"  The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island,"  1862,  have  a  mild  kind  of  in- 
terest, and  contain  truthful  portraiture  of  provincial  ways 
and  traits ;  while  later  fictions  of  a  domestic  type,  like 


182  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"Pink  and  White  Tyranny  "  and  "My  Wife  and  I,"  are 
really  beneath  criticism. 

There  were  other  Connecticut  writers  contemporary  with 
Mrs.  Stowe  :  Mrs.  L.  H.  Sigourney,  for  example,  a  Hart- 
ford poetess,  formerly  known  as  "  the  Hemans  of  America," 
but  now  quite  obsolete  ;  and  J.  G.  Percival,  of  New  Haven, 
a  shy  and  eccentric  scholar,  whose  geological  work  was  of 
value,  and  whose  memory  is  preserved  by  one  or  two  of  his 
simpler  poems,  still  in  circulation,  such  as  "To  Seneca 
Lake  "and  "The  Coral  Grove."  Another  Hartford  poet, 
Brainard — already  spoken  of  as  an  early  friend  of  Whittier, 
— died  young,  leaving  a  few  pieces  which  show  that  his 
lyrical  gift  was  spontaneous  and  genuine,  but  had  received 
little  cultivation.  A  much  younger  writer  than  either  of 
these,  Donald  G.  Mitchell,  of  New  Haven,  has  a  more  lasting 
place  in  our  literature,  by  virtue  of  his  charmingly  written 
"Eeveries  of  a  Bachelor,"  1850,  and  "Dream  Life,"  1852, 
stories  which  sketch  themselves  out  in  a  series  of  remi- 
niscences and  lightly  connected  scenes,  and  which  always 
appeal  freshly  to  young  men  because  they  have  that 
dreamy  outlook  upon  life  which  is  characteristic  of  youth. 
But,  upon  the  whole,  the  most  important  contribution 
made  by  Connecticut  in  that  generation  to  the  literary 
stock  of  America  was  the  Beecher  family.  Lyman  Beecher 
had  been  an  influential  preacher  and  theologian,  and  a 
sturdy  defender  of  orthodoxy  against  Boston  Unitarianism. 
Of  his  numerous  sons  and  daughters,  all  more  or  less  noted 
for  intellectual  vigor  and  independence,  the  most  eminent 
were  Mrs.  Stowe  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  the  great  pulpit 
orator  of  Brooklyn.  Mr.  Beecher  was  too  busy  a  man  to 
give  more  than  his  spare  moments  to  general  literature. 
His  sermons,  lectures,  and  addresses  were  reported  for  the 
daily  papers  and  printed  in  part  in  book  form  ;  but  these 
lose  greatly  when  divorced  from  the  large,  warm,  and 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  183 

benignant  personality  of  the  man.  His  volumes  made  up 
of  articles  in  the  Independent  and  the  Ledger,  such  as 
"Star  Papers,"  1855,  and  "Eyes  and  Ears,"  1862,  contain 
many  delightful  morceaux  upon  country  life  and  similar 
topics,  though  they  are  hardly  wrought  with  sufficient 
closeness  and  care  to  take  a  permanent  place  in  letters. 
Like  Willis's  "  Ephemerae,"  they  are  excellent  literary 
journalism,  but  hardly  literature. 

We  may  close  our  retrospect  of  American  literature  before 
1861  with  a  brief  notice  of  one  of  the  most  striking  literary 
phenomena  of  the  time— the  "Leaves  of  Grass"  of  Walt 
Whitman  (1819-92),  published  at  Brooklyn  in  1855.  The 
author,  born  at  West  Hills,  Long  Island,  had  been 
printer,  school-teacher,  editor,  and  builder.  He  had  scrib- 
bled a  good  deal  of  poetry  of  the  ordinary  kind,  which  at- 
tracted little  attention,  but  finding  conventional  rhymes 
and  meters  too  cramping  a  vehicle  for  his  need  of  expres- 
sion, he  discarded  them  for  a  kind  of  rhythmic  chant  of 
which  the  following  is  a  fair  specimen  : 

"Press  close,  bare-bosom' d    night!      Press   close,    magnetic, 

nourishing  night ! 

Night  of  south  winds !  night  of  the  few  large  stars ! 
Still,  nodding  night!  mad,  naked,  summer  night!  " 

The  invention  was  not  altogether  a  new  one.  The  English 
translation  of  the  psalms  of  David  and  of  some  of  the 
prophets,  the  "  Poems  of  Ossian,"  and  some  of  Matthew 
Arnold's  unrhymed  pieces,  especially  "The  Strayed  Rev- 
eller," have  an  irregular  rhythm  of  this  kind,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  poems,  like  "Beowulf,"  and 
the  Scripture  paraphrases  attributed  to  Csedmon.  But  this 
species  of  oratio  soluta,  carried  to  the  lengths  to  which 
Whitman  carried  it,  had  an  air  of  novelty  which  was  dis- 
pleasing to  some,  while  to  others,  weary  of  familiar  meas- 
ures and  jingling  rhymes,  it  was  refreshing  in  its  boldness 


184  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

and  freedom.  There  is  no  consenting  estimate  of  this 
poet.  Many  think  that  his  so-called  poems  are  not  poems 
at  all,  but  simply  a  bad  variety  of  prose  ;  that  there  is 
nothing  to  him  beyond  a  combination  of  affectation  and 
indecency  ;  and  that  the  Whitman  culte  is  a  passing  "  fad  " 
of  a  few  literary  men,  and  especially  of  a  number  of  English 
critics  like  Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  Buchanan,  who,  being 
determined  to  have  something  unmistakably  American — 
that  is  different  from  anything  else — in  writings  from  this 
side  of  the  water,  before  they  will  acknowledge  any  origi- 
nality in  them,  have  been  misled  into  discovering  in  Whit- 
man "the  poet  of  democracy."  Others  maintain  that  he 
is  the  greatest  of  American  poets,  or,  indeed,  of  all  modern 
poets  ;  that  he  is  "  cosmic,"  or  universal,  and  that  he  has 
put  an  end  forever  to  puling  rhymes  and  lines  chopped  up 
into  metrical  feet. 

Whether  Whitman's  poetry  is  formally  poetry  at  all  or 
merely  the  raw  material  of  poetry,  the  chaotic  and  amor- 
phous impression  which  it  makes  on  readers  of  conservative 
tastes  results  from  his  effort  to  take  up  into  his  verse  ele- 
ments which  poetry  has  usually  left  out — the  ugly,  the 
earthy,  and  even  the  disgusting  ;  the  "  under  side  of  things," 
which  he  holds  not  to  be  prosaic  when  apprehended  with  a 
strong,  masculine  joy  in  life  and  nature  seen  in  all  their 
aspects.  The  lack  of  these  elements  in  the  conventional 
poets  seems  to  him  and  his  disciples  like  leaving  out  the 
salt  from  the  ocean,  making  poetry  merely  pretty  and  blink- 
ing whole  classes  of  facts.  Hence  the  naturalism  and  ani- 
malism of  some  of  the  divisions  in  "  Leaves  of  Grass,"  par- 
ticularly that  entitled  "Children  of  Adam,"  which  gave 
great  offense  by  its  immodesty,  or  its  outspokenness.  Whit- 
man holds  that  nakedness  is  chaste  ;  that  all  the  functions 
of  the  body  in  healthy  exercise  are  equally  clean  ;  that  all, 
in  fact,  are  divine,  and  that  matter  is  as  divine  as  spirit. 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  185 

The  effort  to  get  everything  into  his  poetry,  to  speak  out  his 
thought  just  as  it  comes  to  him,  accounts,  too,  for  his  way 
of  cataloguing  objects  without  selection.  His  single  ex- 
pressions are  often  unsurpassed  for  descriptive  beauty  and 
truth.  He  speaks  of  "the  vitreous  pour  of  the  full  moon, 
just  tinged  with  blue,"  of  the  "lisp  "  of  the  plain,  of  the 
prairies,  "where  herds  of  buffalo  make  a  crawling  spread  of 
the  square  miles."  But  if  there  is  any  eternal  distinction 
between  poetry  and  prose,  the  most  liberal  canons  of  the 
poetic  art  will  never  agree  to  accept  lines  like  these  : 

"And  [I]  remember  putting  plasters  on  the  galls  of  his  neck 

and  ankles ; 
He  stayed  with  me  a  week  before  he  was  recuperated,  and  passed 

north." 

Whitman  is  the  spokesman  of  democracy  and  of  the 
future ;  full  of  brotherliness  and  hope,  loving  the  warm, 
gregarious  pressure  of  the  crowd  and  the  touch  of  his  com- 
rade's elbow  in  the  ranks.  He  liked  the  people — multitudes 
of  people  ;  the  swarm  of  life  beheld  from  a  Broadway  omni- 
bus or  a  Brooklyn  ferry-boat.  The  rowdy  and  the  negro 
truck-driver  were  closer  to  his  sympathy  than  the  gentle- 
man and  the  scholar.  "I  loaf  and  invite  my  soul,"  he 
writes ;  "I  sound  my  barbaric  yawp  over  the  roofs  of  the 
world."  His  poem  "Walt  Whitman,"  frankly  egotistic, 
simply  describes  himself  as  a  typical,  average  man — the 
same  as  any  other  man,  and  therefore  not  individual  but 
universal.  He  has  great  tenderness  and  heartiness — "the 
good  gray  poet";  and  during  the  Civil  War  he  devoted 
himself  unreservedly  to  the  wounded  soldiers  in  the  Wash- 
ington hospitals — an  experience  which  he  has  related  in 
"The  Dresser"  and  elsewhere.  It  is  characteristic  of  his 
rough  and  ready  comradery  to  use  slang  and  newspaper 
English  in  his  poetry,  to  call  himself  Walt  instead  of  Wal- 
ter, and  to  have  his  picture  taken  in  a  slouch  hat  and  with 


186  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

a  flannel  shirt  open  at  the  throat.  His  decriers  allege  that 
he  posed  for  effect ;  that  he  is  simply  a  backward  eddy  in 
the  tide,  and  significant  only  as  a  temporary  reaction  against 
ultra  civilization — like  Thoreau,  though  in  a  different  way. 
But  with  all  his  shortcomings  in  art  there  is  a  healthy, 
virile,  tumultuous  pulse  of  life  in  his  lyric  utterance  and  a 
great  sweep  of  imagination  in  his  panoramic  view  of  times 
and  countries.  One  likes  to  read  him  because  he  feels  so 
good,  enjoys  so  fully  the  play  of  his  senses,  and  has  such  a 
lusty  confidence  in  his  own  immortality  and  in  the  pros- 
pects of  the  human  race.  Stripped  of  verbiage  and  repeti- 
tion, his  ideas  are  not  many.  His  indebtedness  to  Emerson 
— who  wrote  an  introduction  to  the  "  Leaves  of  Grass" — is 
manifest.  He  sings  of  man  and  not  men,  and  the  individual 
differences  of  character,  sentiment,  and  passion,  the  dra- 
matic elements  of  life,  find  small  place  in  his  system.  It  is 
too  early  to  say  what  will  be  his  final  position  in  literary 
history.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  democratic  masses 
have  not  accepted  him  yet  as  their  poet.  Whittier  and 
Longfellow,  the  poets  of  conscience  and  feeling,  are  the 
darlings  of  the  American  people.  The  admiration,  and 
even  the  knowledge  of  Whitman,  are  mostly  esoteric,  con- 
fined to  the  literary  class.  It  is  also  not  without  signifi- 
cance as  to  the  ultimate  reception  of  his  innovations  in 
verse  that  he  has  numerous  parodists,  but  no  imitators. 
The  tendency  among  our  younger  poets  is  not  toward  the 
abandonment  of  rhyme  and  meter,  but  toward  the  intro- 
duction of  new  stanza  forms  and  an  increasing  carefulness 
and  finish  in  the  technique  of  their  art.  It  is  observable, 
too,  that  in  his  most  inspired  passages  Whitman  reverts  to 
the  old  forms  of  verse  ;  to  blank  verse,  for  example,  in  the 
"Man-of-WarBird»: 

"  Thou  who  hast  slept  all  night  upon  the  storm, 
Waking  renewed  on  thy  prodigious  pinions,"  etc.; 


Literature  in  the  Cities.  187 

and  elsewhere  not  infrequently  to  dactylic  hexameters  and 
pentameters : 

"  Earth  of  shine  and  dark,  mottling  the  tide  of  the  river !  .  .  . 
Far-swooping,  elbowed  earth  !  rich,  apple-blossomed  earth." 

Indeed,  Whitman's  most  popular  poem,  "My  Captain," 
written  after  the  assassination  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  differs 
little  in  form  from  ordinary  verse,  as  a  stanza  of  it  will 
show : 

"  My  captain  does  not  answer,  his  lips  are  pale  and  still ; 
My  father  does  not  feel  my  arm,  he  has  no  pulse  nor  will ; 
The  ship  is  anchored  safe  and  sound,  its  voyage  closed  and  done ; 
From  fearful  trip  the  victor  ship  comes  in  with  object  won. 
Exult,  O  shores,  and  ring,  O  bells ! 

But  I,  with  mournful  tread, 
Walk  the  deck,  my  captain  lies 
Fallen,  cold  and  dead." 

This  is  from  "  Drum  Taps,"  a  volume  of  poems  of  the  Civil 
War.  Whitman  also  wrote  prose  having  much  the  same 
quality  as  his  poetry  :  "Democratic  Vistas,"  "Memoranda 
of  the  Civil  War,"  and,  more  recently,  "Specimen  Days." 
His  residence  during  his  last  years  was  at  Camden,  New 
Jersey,  where  a  centennial  edition  of  his  writings  was  pub- 
lished in  1876. 


1.  WILLIAM  CULLEN  BRYANT:  " Thanatopsis "  ;  "To  a 
Waterfowl";    "Green    River";    "Hymn    to    the   North 
Star";   "A  Forest    Hymn";   "O  Fairest    of  the    Rural 
Maids"  ;   "June"  ;    "The  Death  of  the  Flowers"  ;  "The 
Evening  Wind "  ;  "  The  Battle-Field "  ;  "The  Planting  of 
the  Apple-tree  "  ;  "  The  Flood  of  Years." 

2.  JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIEB:    "Cassandra  South- 
wick"  ;  "The  New  Wife  and  the  Old"  ;  "The  Virginia 
Slave  Mother";  "Randolph  of   Roanoke";  "Barclay  of 
Ury";    "The  Witch   of  Wenham  "  ;    "Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride";    "Marguerite";    "Maud  Muller";   "  Telling  the 


188  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Bees  "  ;  "  My  Playmate  "  ;   "  Barbara  Frietchie  "  ;  "  Icha- 
bod  "  ;  "  Laus  Deo  »  ;  "  Snow-Bound." 

3.  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  :  "  The  Eaven  "  ;  "  The  Bells  "  ; 
"Israfel";  "Ulalume";  "To  Helen";  "The  City  in  the 
Sea";  "Annabel  Lee";   "To   One  in  Paradise";  "The 
Sleeper";    "The  Valley  of   Unrest";    "The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher"  ;  "  Ligeia  "  ;  "  William  Wilson  "  ;  "  The 
Cask  of  Amontillado  ";  "  The  Assignation  ";  "  The  Masque 
of  the  Bed  Death  "  ;  "  Narrative  of  A.  Gordon  Pym." 

4.  N.  P.  WILLIS  :    "  Select  Prose  Writings."    New  York: 
1886. 

5.  MBS.  H.  B.  STOWE  :     "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  ;  "  Old- 
town  Folks." 

6.  W.  G.  SIMMS  :    "The  Partisan  "  ;  "  The  Yemassee." 

7.  BAYARD  TAYLOR  :      "  A  Bacchic  Ode ";     "Hylas"; 
"Kubleh";     "The   Soldier   and   the   Pard";    "Sicilian 
Wine  "  ;  "  Taurus  "  ;  "  Serapion  "  ;    "  The  Metempsychosis 
of  the  Pine"  ;  "  The  Temptation  of  Hassan  Ben  Khaled  "  ; 
"  Bedouin  Song  "  ;  "  Euphorion  "  ;  "  The  Quaker  Widow  "  ; 
"John  Reid";   "Lars";   "Views  Afoot";   "Byways  of 
Europe  "  ;  "  The  Story  of  Kennett "  ;  "  The  Echo  Club." 

8.  WALT  WHITMAN  :     "  My  Captain  "  ;  "  When  Lilacs 
Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloomed  "  ;  "  Out  of  the  Cradle  End- 
lessly Rocking"  ;   "Pioneers,  O  Pioneers"  ;  "The  Mystic 
Trumpeter"  ;  "A  Woman  at  Auction  "  ;  "Sea-shore  Mem- 
oirs"; "  Passage  to  India" ;  "  Man nahatta" ;"  The  Wound- 
Dresser  "  ;  "  Longings  for  Home." 

9.  "  Poets  of  America."     By  E.  C.  Stedman.     Boston : 
1885. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

LITERATURE  SINCE  1861. 

A  GENERATION  has  passed  since  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War,  and  although  public  affairs  are  still  mainly  in  the 
hands  of  men  who  had  reached  manhood  before  the  conflict 
opened,  or  who  were  old  enough  at  that  time  to  remember 
clearly  its  stirring  events,  the  younger  men  who  are  daily 
coming  forward  to  take  their  places  know  it  only  by  tra- 
dition. It  makes  a  definite  break  in  the  history  of  our 
literature,  and  a  number  of  new  literary  schools  and  tend- 
encies have  appeared  since  its  close.  As  to  the  literature 
of  the  war  itself,  it  was  largely  the  work  of  writers  who  had 
already  reached  or  passed  middle  age.  All  of  the  more  im- 
portant authors  described  in  the  last  three  chapters  sur- 
vived the  Rebellion  except  Poe,  who  died  in  1849,  Prescott, 
who  died  in  1859,  and  Thoreau  and  Hawthorne,  who  died 
in  the  second  and  fourth  years  of  the  war,  respectively. 
The  final  and  authoritative  history  of  the  struggle  has  not 
yet  been  written,  and  cannot  be  written  for  many  years  to 
come.  Many  partial  and  tentative  accounts  have,  however, 
appeared,  among  which  may  be  mentioned,  on  the  northern 
side,  Horace  Greeley's  "American  Conflict,"  1864-66,  Vice- 
president  Wilson's  "Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave  Power  in 
America,"  and  J.  W.  Draper's  "American  Civil  War," 
1868-70 ;  on  the  southern  side,  Alexander  H.  Stephens's 
"  Confederate  States  of  America,"  Jefferson  Davis's  "Rise 
and  Fall  of  the  Confederate  States  of  America,"  and  E.  A. 
Pollard's  "  Lost  Cause."  These,  with  the  exception  of  Dr. 
Draper's  philosophical  narrative,  have  the  advantage  of  be- 

189 


190  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

ing  the  work  of  actors  in  the  political  or  military  events 
which  they  describe,  and  the  disadvantage  of  being,  there- 
fore, partisan — in  some  instances  passionately  partisan.  A 
storehouse  of  materials  for  the  coming  historian  is  also  at 
hand  in  Frank  Moore's  great  collection,  "  The  Rebellion 
Record"  ;  in  numerous  regimental  histories  of  special  ar- 
mies, departments,  and  battles,  like  W.  Swinton's  "Army  of 
the  Potomac  "  ;  in  the  autobiographies  and  recollections  of 
Grant  and  Sherman  and  other  military  leaders ;  in  the 
"  war  papers,"  published  in  the  Century  Magazine,  and  re- 
printed in  book  form,  as  "  Battles  and  Leaders  of  the  Civil 
War,"  1887-89,  and  innumerable  sketches  and  reminiscences 
by  officers  and  privates  on  both  sides. 

The  war  had  its  poetry,  its  humors,  and  its  general  litera- 
ture, some  of  which  have  been  mentioned  in  connection 
with  Whittier,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Whitman,  and  others,  and 
some  of  which  remain  to  be  mentioned,  as  the  work  of  new 
writers,  or  of  writers  who  had  previously  made  little  mark. 
There  were  war  songs  on  both  sides,  few  of  which  had  much 
literary  value  excepting,  perhaps,  James  R.  Randall's  south- 
ern ballad,  "Maryland,  My  Maryland,"  sung  to  the  old  col- 
lege air  of  "  Lauriger  Horatius"  ;  and  the  grand  martial 
chorus  of  "  John  Brown's  Body,"  an  old  Methodist  hymn, 
to  which  the  northern  armies  beat  time  as  they  went 
"marching  on."  Randall's  song,  though  spirited,  was 
marred  by  its  fire-eating  absurdities  about  "  vandals"  and 
"  minions  "  and  "  northern  scum,"  the  cheap  insults  of  the 
southern  newspaper  press.  To  furnish  the  "  John  Brown  " 
chorus  with  words  worthy  of  the  music,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward 
Howe  wrote  her  "  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic,"  a  noble 
poem,  but  rather  too  fine  and  literary  for  a  song,  and  so 
never  fully  accepted  by  the  soldiers. 

Among  the  many  verses  which  voiced  the  anguish  and 
the  patriotism  of  that  stern  time,  which  told  of  partings 


Literature  Since  1861.  191 

and  home-comings,  of  women  waiting  by  desolate  hearths, 
in  country  homes,  for  tidings  of  husbands  and  sons  who 
had  gone  to  the  war  ;  or  which  celebrated  individual  deeds 
of  heroism  or  sang  the  thousand  private  tragedies  and 
heart-breaks  of  the  great  conflict,  by  far  the  greater  num- 
ber were  of  too  humble  a  grade  to  survive  the  feeling  of  the 
hour.  Among  the  best  or  the  most  popular  of  them  were 
Kate  Putnam  Osgood's  "  Driving  Home  the  Cows,"  Mrs. 
Ethel  Lymi  Beers's  "All  Quiet  Along  the  Potomac,"  For- 
ceythe  Willson's  "  Old  Sergeant,"  and  John  James  Piatt's 
"  Riding  to  Vote."  Of  the  poets  wThom  the  war  brought 
out,  or  developed,  the  most  noteworthy  were  Henry  Tim- 
rod,  of  South  Carolina,  and  Henry  Howard  Brownell,  of 
Connecticut.  During  the  war  Timrod  was  with  the  Con- 
federate Army  of  the  West,  as  correspondent  for  the 
Charleston  Mercury,  and  in  1864  he  became  assistant  editor 
of  the  South  Carolinian,  at  Columbia.  Sherman's  "  march 
to  the  sea"  broke  up  his  business,  and  he  returned  to 
Charleston.  A  complete  edition  of  his  poems  was  pub- 
lished in  1873,  six  years  after  his  death.  The  prettiest  of 
all  Timrod's  poems  is  "  Katie,"  but  more  to  our  present  pur- 
pose are  "  Charleston" — written  in  the  time  of  blockade — 
and  "The  Unknown  Dead,"  which  tells 

"  Of  nameless  graves  on  battle  plains, 
Wash'd  by  a  single  winter's  rains, 
Where,  some  beneath  Virginian  hills, 
And  some  by  green  Atlantic  rills, 
Some  by  the  waters  of  the  West, 
A  myriad  unknown  heroes  rest." 

When  the  war  was  over  a  poet  of  New  York  State,  F.  M. 
Finch,  sang  of  these  and  of  other  graves  in  his  beautiful 
Decoration  Day  lyric,  "The  Blue  and  the  Gray,"  which 
spoke  the  word  of  reconciliation  and  consecration  for  North 
and  South  alike. 
Brownell,  whose  "  Lyrics  of  a  Day  "  and  "  War  Lyrics  " 


192  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

were  published  respectively  in  1864  and  1866,  was  private 
secretary  to  Farragut,  on  whose  flag- ship,  the  Hartford, 
he  was  present  at  several  great  naval  engagements,  such  as 
the  "Passage  of  the  Forts"  below  New  Orleans,  and  the 
action  off  Mobile,  described  in  his  poem  "  The  Bay  Fight." 
With  some  roughness  and  unevenness  of  execution  Brown- 
ell's  poetry  had  a  fire  which  places  him  next  to  Whittier  as 
the  Korner  of  the  Civil  War.  In  him,  especially,  as  in 
Whittier,  is  that  Puritan  sense  of  the  righteousness  of  his 
cause  which  made  the  battle  for  the  Union  a  holy  war  to 
the  crusaders  against  slavery  : 

"  Full  red  the  furnace  fires  must  glow 
That  melt  the  ore  of  mortal  kind : 
The  mills  of  God  are  grinding  slow, 
But  ah,  how  close  they  grind ! 

"  To-day  the  Dahlgren  and  the  drum 

Are  dread  apostles  of  his  name ; 

His  kingdom  here  can  only  come 

By  chrism  of  blood  and  flame." 

One  of  the  earliest  martyrs  of  the  war  was  Theodore 
Winthrop,  hardly  known  as  a  writer  until  the  publication 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of  his  vivid  sketches  of  "  Washing- 
ton as  a  Camp,"  describing  the  march  of  his  regiment,  the 
famous  New  York  Seventh,  and  its  first  quarters  in  the 
Capitol  at  Washington.  A  tragic  interest  was  given  to 
these  papers  by  Winthrop's  gallant  death  in  the  action  of 
Big  Bethel,  June  10,  1861.  While  this  was  still  fresh  in 
public  recollection  his  manuscript  novels  were  published, 
together  with  a  collection  of  his  stories  and  sketches  re- 
printed from  the  magazines.  His  novels,  though  in  parts 
crude  and  immature,  have  a  dash  and  buoyancy — an  out- 
door air  about  them — which  give  the  reader  a  winning  im- 
pression of  Winthrop's  personality.  The  best  of  them  is, 
perhaps,  "  Cecil  Dreeme,"  a  romance  that  reminds  one  a 
little  of  Hawthorne,  and  the  scene  of  which  is  the  New 


Literature  Since  1861.  193 

York  University  building  on  Washington  Square,  a  locality 
that  has  been  further  celebrated  in  Henry  James's  novel  of 
"  Washington  Square." 

Another  member  of  this  same  Seventh  Regiment,  Fitz 
James  O'Brien,  an  Irishman  by  birth,  who  died  at  Balti- 
more in  1862  from  the  effects  of  a  wound  received  in  a  cav- 
alry skirmish,  had  contributed  to  the  magazines  a  number 
of  poems  and  of  brilliant  though  fantastic  tales,  among 
which  the  "Diamond  Lens"  and  "What  Was  It?"  had 
something  of  Edgar  A.  Poe's  quality.  Another  Irish- 
American,  Charles  G.  Halpine,  under  the  pen-name  of 
"  Miles  O'Reilly,"  wrote  a  good  many  clever  ballads  of  the 
war,  partly  serious  and  partly  in  comic  brogue.  Prose 
writers  of  note  furnished  the  magazines  with  narratives  of 
their  experience  at  the  seat  of  Avar,  among  papers  of  which 
kind  may  be  mentioned  Dr.  Holmes's  "My  Search  for  the 
Captain,"  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  Col.  T.  W.  Higgin- 
son's"Army  Life  in  a  Black  Regiment,"  collected  into  a 
volume  in  1870. 

Of  the  public  oratory  of  the  war,  the  foremost  example  is 
the  ever  memorable  address  of  Abraham  Lincoln  at  the 
dedication  of  the  National  Cemetery  at  Gettysburg.  The 
war  had  brought  the  nation  to  its  intellectual  majority.  In 
the  stress  of  that  terrible  fight  there  was  no  room  for 
buncombe  and  verbiage,  such  as  the  newspapers  and  stump- 
speakers  used  to  dole  out  in  ante  bellum  days.  Lincoln's 
speech  is  short — a  few  grave  words  which  he  turned  aside 
for  a  moment  to  speak  in  the  midst  of  his  task  of  saving 
the  country.  The  speech  is  simple,  naked  of  figures,  every 
sentence  impressed  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the 
work  yet  to  be  done  and  with  a  stern  determination  to  do 
it.  "  In  a  larger  sense,"  it  says,  "  we  cannot  dedicate,  we 
cannot  consecrate,  we  cannot  hallow  this  ground.  The 
brave  men,  living  and  dead,  who  struggled  here  have  con- 


194  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

secrated  it  far  above  our  poor  power  to  add  or  detract.  The 
world  will  little  note  nor  long  remember  what  we  say  here, 
but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us,  the 
living,  rather  to  be  dedicated  here  to  the  unfinished  work 
which  they  who  fought  here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  ad- 
vanced. It  is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedicated  to  the 
great  task  remaining  before  us ;  that  from  these  honored 
dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that  cause  for  which 
they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion  ;  that  we  here 
highly  resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain  ; 
that  this  nation,  under  God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of 
freedom  ;  and  that  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 
Here  was  eloquence  of  a  different  sort  from  the  sonorous 
perorations  of  Webster  or  the  polished  climaxes  of  Everett. 
As  we  read  the  plain,  strong  language  of  this  brief  classic, 
with  its  solemnity,  its  restraint,  its  "brave  old  wisdom  of 
sincerity,"  we  seem  to  see  the  president's  homely  features 
irradiated  with  the  light  of  coming  martyrdom — 

"  The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man, 

Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame, 
New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American." 

Within  the  past  quarter  of  a  century  the  popular  school 
of  American  humor  has  reached  its  culmination.  Every 
man  of  genius  who  is  a  humorist  at  all  is  so  in  a  way 
peculiar  to  himself.  There  is  no  lack  of  individuality  in 
the  humor  of  Irving  and  Hawthorne  and  the  wit  of 
Holmes  and  Lowell,  but  although  they  are  new  in  subject 
and  application  they  are  not  new  in  kind.  Irving,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  the  literary  descendant  of  Addison.  The 
character  sketches  in, "  Bracebridge  Hall"  are  of  the  same 
family  with  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  and  the  other  figures  of 
the  Spectator  Club.  "  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New 
York,"  though  purely  American  in  its  matter,  is  not  dis- 


Literature  Since  1861.  195 

tinctly  American  in  its  method,  which  is  akin  to  the  mock 
heroic  of  Fielding  and  the  irony  of  Swift  in  "  The  Voyage 
to  Lilliput."  Irving's  humor,  like  that  of  all  the  great 
English  humorists,  had  its  root  in  the  perception  of  char- 
acter— of  the  characteristic  traits  of  men  and  classes  of 
men,  as  ground  of  amusement.  It  depended  for  its  effect, 
therefore,  upon  its  truthfulness,  its  dramatic  insight  and 
sympathy,  as  did  the  humor  of  Shakespeare,  of  Sterne, 
Lamb,  and  Thackeray.  This  perception  of  the  character- 
istic, when  pushed  to  excess,  issues  in  grotesque  and  carica- 
ture, as  in  some  of  Dickens's  inferior  creations,  which  are 
little  more  than  personified  single  tricks  of  manner, 
speech,  feature,  or  dress.  Hawthorne's  rare  humor  differed 
from  Irving's  in  temper  but  not  in  substance,  and  belonged, 
like  Irving's,  to  the  English  variety.  Dr.  Holmes's  more 
pronouncedly  comic  verse  does  not  differ  specifically  from 
the  facetice  of  Thomas  Hood,  but  his  prominent  trait  is 
wit,  which  is  the  laughter  of  the  head  as  humor  is  of  the 
heart.  The  same  is  true,  with  qualifications,  of  Lowell, 
whose  "  Biglow  Papers,"  though  humor  of  an  original  sort 
in  their  revelation  of  Yankee  character,  are  essentially 
satirical.  It  is  the  cleverness,  the  shrewdness  of  the  hits  in 
the  "Biglow  Papers,"  their  logical,  that  is,  witty  character, 
as  distinguished  from  their  drollery,  that  arrests  the  atten- 
tion. They  are  funny,  but  they  are  not  so  funny  as  they 
are  smart. 

In  all  these  writers  humor  was  blent  with  more  serious 
qualities,  which  gave  fineness  and  literary  value  to  their 
humorous  writings.  Their  view  of  life  was  not  exclusively 
comic.  But  there  has  been  a  class  of  jesters,  of  professional 
humorists,  in  America,  whose  product  is  so  indigenous,  so 
different,  if  not  in  essence,  yet  at  least  in  form  and  expres- 
sion, from  any  European  humor,  that  it  may  be  regarded  as 
a  unique  addition  to  the  comic  literature  of  the  world.  It 


196  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

has  been  accepted  as  such  in  England,  where  Artemus 
Ward  and  Mark  Twain  are  familiar  to  multitudes  who  have 
never  read  "  The  One-Hoss  Shay"  or  "  The  Courtin'."  And 
though  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  maintain  that  either  of 
these  writers  takes  rank  with  Lowell  and  Holmes,  or  to 
deny  that  there  is  an  amount  of  flatness  and  coarseness  in 
many  of  their  labored  fooleries  which  puts  large  portions  of 
their  writings  below  the  line  where  real  literature  begins, 
still  it  will  not  do  to  ignore  them  as  mere  buffoons,  or  even 
to  predict  that  their  humors  will  soon  be  forgotten.  It  is 
true  that  no  literary  fashion  is  more  subject  to  change  than 
the  fashion  of  a  jest,  and  that  jokes  that  make  one  genera- 
tion laugh  seem  insipid  to  the  next.  But  there  is  something 
perennial  in  the  fun  of  Rabelais,  whom  Bacon  called  "  the 
great  jester  of  France";  and  though  the  puns  of  Shakes- 
peare's clowns  are  detestable,  the  clowns  themselves  have 
not  lost  their  power  to  amuse. 

The  Americans  are  not  a  gay  people,  but  they  are  fond  of 
a  joke.  Lincoln's  "little  stories"  were  characteristically 
western,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  was  more  endeared 
to  the  masses  by  his  solid  virtues  than  by  the  humorous 
perception  which  made  him  one  of  them.  The  humor  of 
which  we  are  speaking  now  is  a  strictly  popular  and 
national  possession.  Though  America  has  never,  or  not 
until  lately,  had  a  comic  paper  ranking  with  Punch  or 
Charivari  or  the  Fliegende  Blatter,  every  newspaper  has 
had  its  funny  column.  Our  humorists  have  been  graduated 
from  the  journalist's  desk  and  sometimes  from  the  printing- 
press,  and  now  and  then  a  local  or  country  newspaper  has 
risen  into  sudden  prosperity  from  the  possession  of  a  new 
humorist,  as  in  the  case  of  G.  D.  Prentice's  Courier-Journal, 
or  more  recently  of  the  Cleveland  Plaindealer,  the  Danbury 
News,  the  Burlington  Hawkeye,  the  Arkansaw  Traveller, 
the  Texas  Sif tings,  and  numerous  others.  Nowadays  there 


Literature  Since  1861.  197 

are  even  syndicates  of  humorists,  who  cooperate  to  supply 
fun  for  certain  groups  of  periodicals.  Of  course,  the  great 
majority  of  these  manufacturers  of  jests  for  newspapers  and 
comic  almanacs  are  doomed  to  swift  oblivion.  But  it  is  not 
so  certain  that  the  best  of  the  class,  like  Clemens  and 
Browne,  will  not  long  continue  to  be  read  as  illustrative  of 
one  side  of  the  American  mind,  or  that  their  best  things 
will  not  survive  as  long  as  the  mots  of  Sydney  Smith, 
which  are  still  as  current  as  ever.  One  of  the  earliest  of 
them  was  Seba  Smith,  who,  under  the  name  of  "Major 
Jack  Downing,"  did  his  best  to  make  Jackson's  administra- 
tion ridiculous.  B.  P.  Shillaber's  "Mrs.  Partington" — a 
sort  of  American  Mrs.  Malaprop — enjoyed  great  vogue 
before  the  war.  Of  a  somewhat  higher  kind  were  the 
"Phoenixiana,"  1855,  and  "  Squibob  Papers,"  1856,  of  Lieu- 
tenant George  H.  Derby,  "John  Phoenix,"  one  of  the  pio- 
neers of  literature  on  the  Pacific  coast  at  the  time  of  the 
California  gold  fever  of  '49.  Derby's  proposal  for  "A  New 
System  of  English  Grammar,"  his  satirical  account  of  the 
topographical  survey  of  the  two  miles  of  road  between  San 
Francisco  and  the  Mission  Dolores,  and  his  picture  gallery 
made  out  of  the  conventional  houses,  steamboats,  rail-cars, 
runaway  negroes,  and  other  designs  which  used  to  figure  in 
the  advertising  columns  of  the  newspapers,  were  all  very 
ingenious  and  clever. 

But  all  these  pale  before  Artemus  Ward— "Artemus  the 
delicious,"  as  Charles  Reade  called  him — who  first  secured 
for  this  peculiarly  American  type  of  humor  a  hearing  and 
reception  abroad.  Ever  since  the  invention  of  Hosea  Big- 
low,  an  imaginary  personage  of  some  sort,  under  cover  of 
whom  the  author  might  conceal  his  own  identity,  has 
seemed  a  necessity  to  our  humorists.  Artemus  Ward  was  a 
traveling  showman  who  went  about  the  country  exhibiting 
a  collection  of  wax  "figgers"  and  whose  experiences  and 


198  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

reflections  were  reported  in  grammar  and  spelling  of  a  most 
ingeniously  eccentric  kind.  His  inventor  was  Charles  F. 
Browne,  originally  of  Maine,  a  printer  by  trade  and  after- 
ward a  newspaper  writer  and  editor  at  Boston,  Toledo,  and 
Cleveland,  where  his  comicalities  in  the  Plaindealer  first 
began  to  attract  notice.  In  1860  he  came  to  New  York  and 
joined  the  staff  of  Vanity  Fair,  a  comic  weekly  of  much 
brightness,  which  ran  a  short  career  and  perished  for  want 
of  capital.  When  Browne  began  to  appear  as  a  public  lec- 
turer, people  who  had  formed  an  idea  of  him  from  his  im- 
personation of  the  shrewd  and  vulgar  old  showman,  were 
surprised  to  find  him  a  gentlemanly-looking  young  man. 
who  came  upon  the  platform  in  correct  evening  dress,  and 
"  spoke  his  piece  "  in  a  quiet  and  somewhat  mournful  man- 
ner, stopping  in  apparent  surprise  when  any  one  in  the  au- 
dience laughed  at  any  uncommonly  outrageous  absurdity. 
In  London,  where  he  delivered  his  "Lecture  on  the  Mor- 
mons," in  1866,  the  gravity  of  his  bearing  at  first  imposed 
upon  his  hearers,  who  had  come  to  the  hall  in  search  of  in- 
structive information  and  were  disappointed  at  the  inade- 
quate nature  of  the  panorama  which  Browne  had  had  made 
to  illustrate  his  lecture.  Occasionally  some  hitch  would  oc- 
cur in  the  machinery  of  this,  and  the  lecturer  would  leave 
the  rostrum  for  a  few  moments  to  "  work  the  moon  "  that 
shone  upon  the  Great  Salt  Lake,  apologizing  on  his  return 
on  the  ground  that  he  was  "a  man  short "  and  offering  "  to 
pay  a  good  salary  to  any  respectable  boy  of  good  parentage 
and  education  who  is  a  good  moonist."  When  it  gradually 
dawned  upon  the  British  intellect  that  these  and  similar 
devices  of  the  lecturer — such  as  the  soft  music  which  he  had 
the  pianist  play  at  pathetic  passages — nay,  that  the  pano- 
rama and  even  the  lecture  itself  were  of  a  humorous  inten- 
tion, the  joke  began  to  take,  and  Artemus's  success  in  Eng- 
land became  assured.  He  was  employed  as  one  of  the  ed- 


Literature  Since  1861.  199 

itors  of  Punch,  but  died  at  Southampton  in  the  year  follow- 
ing- 
Some  of  Artemus  Ward's  effects  were  produced  by  cacog- 
raphy  or  bad  spelling,  but  there  was  genius  in  the  wildly 
erratic  way  in  which  he  handled  even  this  rather  low  order 
of  humor.  It  is  a  curious  commentary  on  the  wretchedness 
of  our  English  orthography  that  the  phonetic  spelling  of  a 
word,  as  for  example,  wuz  for  was,  should  be  in  itself  an  oc- 
casion of  mirth.  Other  verbal  effects  of  a  different  kind 
were  among  his  devices,  as  in  the  passage  where  the  seven- 
teen widows  of  a  deceased  Mormon  offered  themselves  to 
Artemus. 

"And  I  said,  '  Why  is  this  thus?  What  is  the  reason  of 
this  thusness  ? '  They  hove  a  sigh — seventeen  sighs  of  dif- 
ferent size.  They  said : 

"  '  O,  soon  thou  will  be  gonested  away !' 

"I  told  them  that  when  I  got  ready  to  leave  a  place  I 
wentested. 

"  They  said,  '  Doth  not  like  us  ? ' 

"  I  said,  '  I  doth— I  doth.' 

"  I  also  said,  '  I  hope  your  intentions  are  honorable,  as  I 
am  a  lone  child,  my  parents  being  far — far  away.' 

"  Then  they  said,  '  Wilt  not  marry  us  ? ' 

"  I  said,  '  O  no,  it  cannot  was.' 

"  When  they  cried,  '  O  cruel  man  !  this  is  too  much  !— O, 
too  much! '  I  told  them  that  it  was  on  account  of  the  much- 
ness that  I  declined." 

It  is  hard  to  define  the  difference  between  the  humor  of 
one  writer  and  another,  or  of  one  nation  and  another.  It 
can  be  felt  and  can  be  illustrated  by  quoting  examples,  but 
scarcely  described  in  general  terms.  It  has  been  said  of 
that  class  of  American  humorists  of  which  Artemus  Ward 
is  a  representative  that  their  peculiarity  consists  in  extrav- 
agance, surprise,  audacity,  and  irreverence.  But  all  these 


200  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

qualities  have  characterized  other  schools  of  humor.  There 
is  the  same  element  of  surprise  in  De  Quincey's  anti-climax, 
"Many  a  man  has  dated  his  ruin  from  some  murder  or 
other  which,  perhaps,  at  the  time  he  thought  little  of,"  as 
in  Artemus's  truism  that  "  a  comic  paper  ought  to  publish 
a  joke  now  and  then."  The  violation  of  logic  which  makes 
us  laugh  at  an  Irish  bull  is  likewise  the  source  of  the  humor 
in  Artemus's  saying  of  Jeff  Davis,  that  "  it  would  have 
been  better  than  ten  dollars  in  his  pocket  if  he  had  never 
been  born  "  ;  or  in  his  advice,  "Always  live  within  your 
income,  even  if  you  have  to  borrow  money  to  do  so"  ;  or, 
again,  in  his  announcement  that  "  Mr.  Ward  will  pay  no 
debts  of  his  own  contracting."  A  kind  of  ludicrous  con- 
fusion, caused  by  an  unusual  collocation  of  words,  is  also 
one  of  his  favorite  tricks,  as  when  he  says  of  Brigham 
Young,  "He's  the  most  married  man  I  ever  saw  in  my 
life  "  ;  or  when,  having  been  drafted  at  several  hundred  dif- 
ferent places  where  he  had  been  exhibiting  his  wax  figures, 
he  says  that  if  he  went  on  he  should  soon  become  a  regiment, 
and  adds,  "  I  never  knew  that  there  was  so  many  of  me." 
With  this  a  whimsical  understatement  and  an  affectation 
of  simplicity,  as  where  he  expresses  his  willingness  to  sac- 
rifice "even  his  wife's  relations  "  on  the  altar  of  patriotism  ; 
or  where,  in  delightful  unconsciousness  of  his  own  sins 
against  orthography,  he  pronounces  that  "Chaucer  was  a 
great  poet  but  he  couldn't  spell,"  or  where  he  says  of  the 
feast  of  raw  dog,  tendered  him  by  the  Indian  chief,  Wocky- 
bocky,  "It  don't  agree  with  me.  I  prefer  simpler  food." 
On  the  whole,  it  may  be  said  of  original  humor  of  this  kind, 
as  of  other  forms  of  originality  in  literature,  that  the  ele- 
ments of  it  are  old,  but  their  combinations  are  novel. 

Other  humorists,  like  Henry  W.  Shaw  ("Josh  Billings") 
and  David  R.  Locke  ("Petroleum  V.  Nasby"),  have  used 
bad  spelling  as  a  part  of  their  machinery  ;  while  Robert  H. 


Literature  Since  1861.  201 

Newell  ("Orpheus  C.  Kerr"),  Samuel  L.  Clemens  ("Mark 
Twain  "),  and  more  recently  "  Bill  Nye,"  though  belonging 
to  the  same  school  of  low  or  broad  comedy,  have  discarded 
cacography.  Of  these  the  most  eminent,  by  all  odds,  is 
Mark  Twain,  who  has  probably  made  more  people  laugh 
than  any  other  living  wrriter.  A  Missouriau  by  birth  (1835), 
he  served  the  usual  apprenticeship  at  type-setting  and  edit- 
ing country  newspapers  ;  spent  seven  years  as  a  pilot  on  a 
Mississippi  steamboat,  and  seven  years  more  mining  and 
journalizing  in  Nevada,  where  he  conducted  the  Virginia 
City  Enterprise  :  finally  drifting  to  San  Francisco,  and  was 
associated  with  Bret  Harte  on  the  California?!,  and  in  1867 
published  his  first  book,  "  The  Jumping  Frog."  This  was 
succeeded  by  the  "Innocents  Abroad,"  1869;  "  Roughing 
It,"  1872  ;  "A  Tramp  Abroad,"  1880  ;  and  by  others  not  so 
good, 

Mark  Twain's  drolleries  have  frequently  the  same  air  of 
innocence  and  surprise  as  Artemus  Ward's,  and  there  is  a 
like  suddenness  in  his  turns  of  expression,  as  where  he 
speaks  of  ''•  the  calm  confidence  of  a  Christian  with  four 
aces."  If  he  did  not  originate,  he  at  any  rate  employed 
very  effectively  that  now  familiar  device  of  the  newspaper 
"funny  man"  of  putting  a  painful  situation  euphemisti- 
cally, as  when  he  says  of  a  man  who  was  hanged  that  he 
"received  injuries  which  terminated  in  his  death."  He 
uses  to  the  full  extent  the  American  humorist's  favorite  re- 
sources of  exaggeration  and  irreverence.  An  instance  of 
the  former  quality  may  be  seen  in  his  famous  description 
of  a  dog  chasing  a  coyote,  in  "  Roughing  It,"  or  in  his  in- 
terview with  the  lightning-rod  agent  in  "Mark  Twain's 
Sketches,"  1875,  He  is  a  shrewd  observer,  and  his  humor 
has  a  more  satirical  side  than  Artemus  Ward's,  sometimes 
passing  into  downright  denunciation.  He  delights  partic- 
ularly in  ridiculing  sentimental  humbug  and  moralizing 


202  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

cant.  He  runs  atilt,  as  has  been  said,  at  "  copy-book  texts," 
at  the  temperance  reformer,  the  tract  distributer,  the  Good 
Boy  of  Sunday-school  literature,  and  the  women  who  send 
bouquets  and  sympathetic  letters  to  interesting  criminals. 
He  gives  a  ludicrous  turn  to  famous  historical  anecdotes, 
such  as  the  story  of  George  Washington  and  his  little 
hatchet ;  burlesques  the  time-honored  adventure,  in  nautical 
romances,  of  the  starving  crew  casting  lots  in  the  long-boat, 
and  spoils  the  dignity  of  antiquity  by  modern  trivialities, 
saying  of  a  discontented  sailor  on  Columbus's  ship,  "He 
wanted  fresh  shad."  The  fun  of  "  Innocents  Abroad  "  con- 
sists in  this  irreverent  application  of  modern,  common 
sense,  utilitarian,  democratic  standards  to  the  memorable 
places  and  historical  associations  of  Europe.  Tried  by  this 
test  the  Old  Masters  in  the  picture  galleries  become  laugh- 
able, Abelard  was  a  precious  scoundrel,  and  the  raptures  of 
the  guide-books  are  parodied  without  mercy.  The  tourist 
weeps  at  the  grave  of  Adam.  At  Genoa  he  drives  the 
cicerone  to  despair  by  pretending  never  to  have  heard  of 
Christopher  Columbus,  and  inquiring  innocently,  "Is  he 
dead?"  It  is  Europe  vulgarized  and  stripped  of  its  il- 
lusions— Europe  seen  by  a  western  newspaper  reporter 
without  any  "  historic  imagination." 

The  method  of  this  whole  class  of  humorists  is  the  oppo- 
site of  Addison's  or  Irving's  or  Thackeray's.  It  does  not 
amuse  by  the  perception  of  the  characteristic.  It  is  not 
founded  upon  truth,  but  upon  incongruity,  distortion,  un- 
expectedness. Everything  in  life  is  reversed,  as  in  opera 
bouffe,  and  turned  topsy-turvy,  so  that  paradox  takes  the 
place  of  the  natural  order  of  things.  Nevertheless  they  have 
supplied  a  wholesome  criticism  upon  sentimental  excesses, 
and  the  world  is  in  their  debt  for  many  a  hearty  laugh. 

In  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  December,  1863,  appeared  a 
tale  entitled  "The  Man  Without  a  Country,"  which  made 


Literature  Since  1861.  203 

a  great  sensation,  and  did  much  to  strengthen  patriotic 
feeling  in  one  of  the  darkest  hours  of  the  nation's  history. 
It  was  the  story  of  one  Philip  Nolan,  an  army  officer, 
whose  head  had  been  turned  by  Aaron  Burr,  and  who, 
having  been  censured  by  a  court-martial  for  some  minor 
offense,  exclaimed  petulantly,  upon  mention  being  made  of 
the  United  States  government :  "  Damn  the  United  States  ! 
I  wish  that  I  might  never  hear  the  United  States  men- 
tioned again."  Thereupon  he  was  sentenced  to  have  his 
wish,  and  was  kept  all  his  life  aboard  the  vessels  of  the 
navy,  being  sent  off  on  long  voyages  and  transferred  from 
ship  to  ship,  with  orders  to  those  in  charge  that  his  country 
and  its  concerns  should  never  be  spoken  of  in  his  presence. 
Such  an  air  of  reality  was  given  to  the  narrative  by  inci- 
dental references  to  actual  persons  and  occurrences  that 
many  believed  it  true,  and  some  were  found  who  re- 
membered Philip  Nolan,  but  had  heard  different  versions 
of  his  career.  The  author  of  this  clever  hoax — if  hoax  it 
may  be  called — was  Edward  Everett  Hale,  a  Unitarian 
clergyman  of  Boston,  who  published  a  collection  of  stories 
in  1868,  under  the  fantastic  title,  "If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps," 
indicating  thereby  that  some  of  the  tales  were  possible, 
some  of  them  probable,  and  others  might  even  be  regarded 
as  essentially  true.  A  similar  collection,  "  His  Level  Best, 
and  Other  Stories,"  was  published  in  1873,  and  in  the 
interval  three  volumes  of  a  somewhat  different  kind,  the 
"  Ingham  Papers"  and  "  Sybaris  and  Other  Homes,"  both 
in  1869,  and  "Ten  Times  One  Is  Ten,"  in  1871.  The  author 
shelters  himself  behind  the  imaginary  figure  of  Captain 
Frederic  Ingham,  pastor  of  the  Sandemanian  church  at 
Naguadavick,  and  the  same  characters  have  a  way  of  re- 
appearing in  his  successive  volumes  as  old  friends  of  the 
reader,  which  is  pleasant  at  first,  but  in  the  end  a  little 
tiresome. 


204  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

Mr.  Hale  is  one  of  the  most  original  and  ingenious  of 
American  story-writers.  The  old  device  of  making  wildly 
improbable  inventions  appear  like  fact  by  a  realistic  treat- 
ruent  of  details — a  device  employed  by  Swift  and  Edgar 
Poe,  and  more  lately  by  Jules  Verne — became  quite  fresh 
and  novel  in  his  hands,  and  was  managed  with  a  humor 
all  his  own.  Some  of  his  best  stories  are  :  "  My  Double  and 
How  He  Undid  Me,"  describing  how  a  busy  clergyman 
found  an  Irishman  who  looked  so  much  like  himself  that 
he  trained  him  to  pass  as  his  duplicate,  and  sent  him  to  do 
duty  in  his  stead  at  public  meetings,  dinners,  etc.,  thereby 
escaping  bores  and  getting  time  for  real  work  ;  "  The  Brick 
Moon,"  a  story  of  a  projectile  built  and  launched  into 
space,  to  revolve  in  a  fixed  meridian  about  the  earth  and 
serve  mariners  as  a  mark  of  longitude  ;  "The  Rag  Man  and 
Bag  Woman,"  a  tale  of  an  impoverished  couple  who  made 
a  competence  by  saving  the  pamphlets,  advertisements, 
Avedding-cards,  etc.,  that  came  to  them  through  the  mail, 
and  developing  a  paper  business  on  that  basis;  and  "The 
Skeleton  in  the  Closet,"  which  shows  how  the  fate  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy  was  involved  in  the  adventures  of  a 
certain  hoop-skirt,  "built  in  the  eclipse  and  rigged  with 
curses  dark."  Mr.  Hale's  historical  scholarship  and  his 
habit  of  detail  have  aided  him  in  the  art  of  giving  vraisem- 
blance  to  absurdities.  He  is  known  in  philanthropy  as 
well  as  in  letters,  and  his  tales  have  a  cheerful,  busy,  prac- 
tical way  with  them  in  consonance  with  his  motto,  "  Look 
up  and  not  down,  look  forward  and  not  back,  look  out  and 
not  in,  and  lend  a  hand." 

It  is  too  soon  to  sum  up  the  literary  history  of  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century.  The  writers  who  have  given  it  shape 
are  still  writing,  and  their  work  is  therefore  incomplete. 
But  on  the  slightest  review  of  it  two  facts  become  manifest : 
first,  that  New  England  has  lost  its  long  monopoly  ;  and, 


Literature  Since  1861.  205 


secondly,  that  a  marked  feature  of  the  period  is  the  growth 
of  realistic  fiction.  The  electric  tension  of  the  atmosphere 
for  thirty  years  preceding  the  Civil  War,  the  storm  and 
stress  of  great  public  contests,  and  the  intellectual  stir  pro- 
duced by  transcendentalism  seem  to  have  been  more  favor- 
able to  poetry  and  literary  idealism  than  present  conditions 
are.  At  all  events,  there  are  no  new  poets  who  rank  with 
Whittier,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and  others  of  the  elder  gen- 
oration,  although  George  H.  Boker,  in  Philadelphia,  R.  H. 
Stoddard  and  E.  C.  Stedman,  in  New  York,  and  T.  B.  Al- 
drich,  first  in  Xew  York  and  afterward  in  Boston,  have 
written  creditable  verse  ;  not  to  speak  of  younger  writers, 
whose  work,  however,  for  the  most  part,  has  been  more 
distinguished  by  delicacy  of  execution  than  by  native  im- 
pulse. Mention  has  been  made  of  the  establishment  of 
Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,  which,  under  the  conduct  of 
its  accomplished  editors,  has  provided  the  public  with  an 
abundance  of  good  reading.  The  old  Putnam's  Monthly, 
which  ran  from  1853  to  1858,  and  had  a  strong  corps  of 
contributors,  was  revived  in  1868,  and  continued  by 
that  name  till  1870,  when  it  was  succeeded  by  Scribner's 
Monthly,  under  the  editorship  of  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  and 
this  in  1881  by  The  Century,  an  efficient  rival  of  Harper's 
in  circulation,  in  literary  excellence,  and  in  the  beauty  of 
its  wood-engravings,  the  American  school  of  which  art 
these  two  great  periodicals  have  done  much  to  develop  and 
encourage.  Another  ISTew  York  monthly,  The  Galaxy,  ran 
from  1866  to  1878,  and  was  edited  by  Richard  Grant  White. 
Within  the  last  few  years  a  new  Scribncr's  Magazine  has 
also  taken  the  field.  The  Atlantic,  in  Boston,  and  Lippin- 
cotffs,  in  Philadelphia,  are  no  unworthy  competitors  with 
these  for  public  favor. 

During  the  forties  began  a  new  era  of  national  expansion, 
somewhat  resembling  that  described  in  a  former  chapter, 


206  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

and,  like  that,  bearing  fruit  eventually  in  literature.  The 
admission  of  Florida  as  a  state  in  1845,  and  the  annexation 
of  Texas  in  the  same  year,  were  followed  by  the  cession  of 
California  in  1848,  and  its  admission  as  a  state  in  1850.  In 
1849  came  the  great  rush  to  the  California  gold-fields.  San 
Francisco,  at  first  a  mere  collection  of  tents  and  board  shan- 
ties, with  a  few  adobe  huts,  grew  with  incredible  rapidity 
into  a  great  city — the  wicked  and  wonderful  city  apostro- 
phized by  Bret  Harte  in  his  poem,  "  San  Francisco  ": 

"Serene,  indifferent  of  fate, 
Thou  sittest  at  the  Western  Gate  ; 
Upon  thy  heights  so  lately  won 
Still  slant  the  banners  of  the  sun.  .  .  . 
I  know  thy  cunning  and  thy  greed, 
Thy  hard,  high  lust  and  wilful  deed." 

The  adventurers  of  all  lands  and  races  who  flocked  to  the 
Pacific  coast  found  there  a  motley  state  of  society  between 
civilization  and  savagery.  There  were  the  relics  of  the  old 
Mexican  occupation,  the  Spanish  missions,  with  their  Chris- 
tianized Indians  ;  the  wild  tribes  of  the  plains — Apaches, 
Utes,  and  Navajoes  ;  the  Chinese  coolies  and  washermen — 
all  elements  strange  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  the  states 
of  the  interior.  The  gold-hunters  crossed,  in  stages  or  cara- 
vans, enormous  prairies,  alkaline  deserts  dotted  with  sage- 
brush and  seamed  by  deep  canons,  and  passes  through 
gigantic  mountain  ranges.  On  the  coast  itself  nature  was 
unfamiliar  :  the  climate  was  subtropical ;  fruits  and  vegeta- 
bles grew  to  a  mammoth  size,  corresponding  to  the  enor- 
mous redwoods  in  the  Mariposa  groves  and  the  prodigious 
scale  of  the  scenery  in  the  valley  of  the  Yosemite  and  the 
snowcapped  peaks  of  the  sierras.  At  first  there  were  few 
women,  and  the  men  led  a  wild,  lawless  existence  in  the 
mining  camps.  Hard  upon  the  heels  of  the  prospector  fol- 
lowed the  dram-shop,  the  gambling-hell,  and  the  dance- 
hall.  Every  man  carried  his  "  Colt,"  and  looked  out  for 


Literature  Since  1861.  207 

his  own  life  and  his  "  claim."  Crime  went  unpunished  or 
was  taken  in  hand,  when  it  got  too  rampant,  by  vigilance 
committees.  In  the  diggings  shaggy  frontiersmen  and 
"  Pikes  "  from  Missouri  mingled  with  the  scum  of  eastern 
cities  and  with  broken-down  business  men  and  young  col- 
lege graduates  seeking  their  fortune.  Surveyors  and  geolo- 
gists came  of  necessity  ;  speculators  in  mining  stock  and 
city  lots  set  up  their  offices  in  the  town  ;  later  came  a 
sprinkling  of  school-teachers  and  ministers.  Fortunes  were 
made  in  one  day  and  lost  the  next  at  poker  or  loo.  To-day 
the  lucky  miner  who  had  struck  r  good  "  lead  "  was  drink- 
ing champagne  out  of  pails  and  treating  the  town  ;  to-mor- 
row he  was  "  busted,"  and  shouldered  the  pick  for  a  new 
onslaught  upon  his  luck.  This  strange,  reckless  life  was 
not  without  fascination,  and  highly  picturesque  and  dra- 
matic elements  were  present  in  it.  It  was,  as  Bret  Harte 
says,  "  an  era  replete  with  a  certain  heroic  Greek  poetry," 
and  sooner  or  later  it  was  sure  to  find  its  poet. 

During  the  war  California  remained  loyal  to  the  Union, 
but  was  too  far  from  the  seat  of  conflict  to  experience 
any  serious  disturbance,  and  went  on  independently  de- 
veloping its  own  resources  and  becoming  daily  more  civil- 
ized. By  1868  San  Francisco  had  a  literary  magazine,  The 
Overland  Monthly,  which  ran  until  1875,  and  was  revived  in 
1883.  It  had  a  decided  local  flavor,  and  the  vignette  on  its 
title-page  was  a  happily  chosen  emblem,  representing  a 
grizzly  bear  crossing  a  railway  track.  In  an  early  number 
of  the  Overland  was  a  story  entitled  "  The  Luck  of  Roaring 
Camp,"  by  Francis  Bret  Harte,  a  native  of  Albany,  N.  Y. 
(1835),  who  had  come  to  California  at  the  age  of  seventeen, 
in  time  to  catch  the  unique  aspects  of  the  life  of  the  forty- 
niners,  before  their  vagabond  communities  had  settled  down 
into  the  law-abiding  society  of  the  present  day.  His  first 
contribution  was  followed  by  other  stories  and  sketches  of  a 


208  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters, 

similar  kind,  such  as  "The  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,"  "Hig- 
gles," and  "  Tennessee's  Partner  ";  and  by  verses,  serious 
and  humorous,  of  which  last,  "Plain  Language  from  Truth- 
ful James,"  better  known  as  "  The  Heathen  Chinee,"  made 
an  immediate  hit,  and  carried  its  author's  name  into  every 
corner  of  the  English-speaking  world.  In  1871  he  published 
a  collection  of  his  tales,  another  of  his  poems,  and  a  volume 
of  very  clever  parodies,  "Condensed  Novels,"  which  rank 
with  Thackeray's  "  Novels  by  Eminent  Hands." 

Bret  Harte's  California  stories  were  vivid,  highly  colored 
pictures  of  life  in  the  mining  camps  and  raw  towns  of  the 
Pacific  coast.  The  pathetic  and  the  grotesque  went  hand  in 
hand  in  them,  and  the  author  aimed  to  show  how  even  in 
the  desperate  characters  gathered  together  there — the  for- 
tune-hunters, gamblers,  thieves,  murderers,  drunkards,  and 
prostitutes — the  latent  nobility  of  human  nature  asserted 
itself  in  acts  of  heroism,  magnanimity,  self-sacrifice,  and 
touching  fidelity.  The  same  men  who  cheated  at  cards  and 
shot  each  other  down  with  tipsy  curses  were  capable  on 
occasion  of  the  most  romantic  generosity  and  the  most  deli- 
cate chivalry.  Critics  were  not  wanting  who  held  that,  in 
the  matter  of  dialect  and  manners  and  other  details,  the 
narrator  was  not  true  to  the  facts.  This  was  a  comparatively 
unimportant  charge ;  but  a  more  serious  question  was  the 
doubt  whether  his  characters  were  essentially  true  to  human 
nature ;  whether  the  wild  soil  of  revenge  and  greed  and 
dissolute  living  ever  yields  such  flowers  of  devotion  as  blos- 
som in  "  Tennessee's  Partner  "  and  "  The  Outcasts  of  Poker 
Flat."  However  this  may  be,  there  is  no  question  as  to 
Harte's  power  as  a  narrator.  His  short  stories  are  skilfully 
constructed  and  effectively  told.  They  never  drag,  and  are 
never  overladen  with  description,  reflection,  or  other  lum- 
ber. 

In  his  poems  in  dialect  we  find  the  same  variety  of  types 


Literature  Since  1861.  209 

and  nationalities  characteristic  of  the  Pacific  coast :  the  little 
Mexican  maiden,  Pachita,  in  the  old  mission  garden  ;  the 
wicked  Bill  Nye,  who  tries  to  cheat  the  Heathen  Chinee  at 
euchre  and  to  rob  Injin  Dick  of  his  winning  lottery  ticket ; 
the  geological  society  on  the  Stanislaw  who  settle  their 
scientific  debates  with  chunks  of  old  red  sandstone  and  the 
skulls  of  mammoths ;  the  unlucky  Mr.  Dow,  who  finally 
strikes  gold  while  digging  a  well,  and  builds  a  house  with 
a  "coopilow";  and  Flynn,  of  Virginia,  who  saves  his 
"  pard's  "  life  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  own,  by  holding  up  the 
timbers  in  the  caving  tunnel.  These  poems  are  mostly  in 
monologue,  like  Browning's  dramatic  lyrics,  exclamatory 
and  abrupt  in  style,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  indicated  action, 
as  in  "Jim,"  where  a  miner  comes  into  a  bar-room,  looking 
for  his  old  chum,  learns  that  he  is  dead,  and  is  just  turning 
away  to  hide  his  emotion  when  he  recognizes  Jim  in  his 
informant. 

"  Well,  thar— Good-bye- 
No  more,  sir — I — 

Eh? 

What's  that  you  say  ? — 
Why,  dern  it ! — sho ! — 
No?    Yes!    By  Jo! 

Sold! 

Sold !    Why,  you  limb ! 
You  ornery, 

Derned  old 
Long-legged  Jim ! " 

Bret  Harte  had  many  imitators,  and  not  only  did  our 
newspaper  poetry  for  a  number  of  years  abound  in  the  prop- 
erties of  Californian  life,  such  as  gulches,  placers,  divides, 
etc.,  but  writers  farther  east  applied  his  method  to  other 
conditions.  Of  these  by  far  the  most  successful  was  John 
Hay,  a  native  of  Indiana  and  private  secretary  to  President 
Lincoln,  whose  "Little  Breeches,"  "Jim  Bludso,"  and 
"Mystery  of  Gilgal"  have  rivaled  Bret  Harte's  own  verses 


210  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

in  popularity.  In  the  last  named  piece  the  reader  is  given 
to  feel  that  there  is  something  rather  cheerful  and  humorous 
in  a  bar-room  fight  which  results  in  "  the  gals  that  winter, 
as  a  rule,"  going  "alone  to  singing-school."  In  the  two 
former  we  have  heroes  of  the  Bret  Harte  type,  the  same 
combination  of  superficial  wickedness  with  inherent  loyalty 
and  tenderness.  The  profane  farmer  of  the  Southwest,  who 
"doesn't  pan  out  on  the  prophets,"  and  who  had  taught 
his  little  son  "  to  chaw  terbacker,  just  to  keep  his  milk  teeth 
white,"  but  who  believes  in  God  and  the  angels  ever  since 
the  miraculous  recovery  of  the  same  little  son  when  lost  on 
the  prairie  in  a  blizzard  ;  and  the  unsaintly  and  bigamistic 
captain  of  the  Prairie  Belle,  who  died  like  a  hero,  hold- 
ing the  nozzle  of  his  burning  boat  against  the  bank 

"  Till  the  last  galoot's  ashore." 

The  manners  and  dialect  of  other  classes  and  sections  of 
the  country  have  received  abundant  illustration  of  late 
years.  Edward  Eggleston's  "Hoosier  Schoolmaster,"  1871, 
and  his  other  novels  are  pictures  of  rural  life  in  the  early 
days  of  Indiana.  "  Western  Windows,"  a  volume  of  poems 
by  John  James  Piatt,  also  a  native  of  Indiana,  had  an  un- 
mistakable local  coloring. 

Another  Indiana  poet,  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  has  re- 
cently attained  the  rank  of  a  really  national  poet.  His 
books  sell  by  the  hundred  thousand,  and  his  popularity 
equals,  if  it  does  not  exceed,  that  of  the  favorite  Longfellow. 
The  contents  of  his  first  volume  of  poems  in  the  Hoosier 
dialect,  "  The  Old  Swimmin'  Hole  and  'Leven  More 
Poems,"  1883,  had  originally  appeared  in  the  Indianapolis 
Journal,  and  purported  to  be  the  contributions  of  Benj.  F. 
Johnson,  a  simple-hearted  old  Boone  County  farmer.  This 
quaint  and  friendly  figure  had  an  individuality  as  taking 
as  that  of  those  other  literary  myths,  Diedrich  Knicker- 


Literature  Since  1861.  211 

bocker,  Hosea  Biglow,  and  Artemus  Ward,  without  the 
touch  of  caricature  which  made  them  all  slightly  unreal. 
"Here's  three  on's  are  sophisticated:  thou  art  the  thing 
itself."  The  creator  of  Hosea  Biglow  lived  to  extend  a 
warm  welcome  to  his  youngest  successor  in  the  art  of 
homely  idyllic  verse ;  and  the  venerable  Dr.  Holmes  was 
more  interested  in  these  Hoosier  ballads  than  in  any  other 
recent  phenomenon  in  American  literature. 

Such  poems  as  "  Griggsby's  Station,"  "  The  Airly  Days," 
and  "When  the  Frost  is  on  the  Punkin,"  with  their  abso- 
lute sincerity  and  their  mixture  of  tenderness  and  humor, 
went  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  people.  They  appealed  to 
country  neighbors,  and  to  all  who  had  ever  been  country 
boys  and  played  hookey  to  go  swimming,  or  fishing,  or  bird- 
nesting,  or  stealing  watermelons,  or  simply  lying  on  the 
orchard  grass.  There  is  an  artless,  catching  sing-song  in 
Riley's  meters  which  makes  them  a  kind  of  glorified 
Mother  Goose  Melodies.  Pieces  like  "Little  Orphant 
Annie  "  and  "  The  Raggedy  Man  "  are  as  singable  as  Foster's 
plantation  songs  and  as  poetic,  in  their  interpretation  of  the 
childish  mind,  as  Stevenson's  "A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses." 
This  union  of  lyric  imagination  with  the  lilt  of  the  familiar 
nursery  rhyme  may  be  illustrated  from  a  single  stanza. 

"  An'  little  Orphant  Annie  says,  when  the  blaze  is  blue, 
An'  the  lampwick  sputters,  an'  the  wind  goes  woo-oo ! 
An'  you  hear  the  crickets  quit,  an'  the  moon  is  gray, 
An'  the  lightnin'-bugs  in  dew  is  all  squenched  away,— 
You  better  mind  yer  parents,  an'  yer  teachers  fond  and  dear, 
An'  churish  them  'at  loves  you,  an'  dry  the  orphant's  tear, 
An'  he'p  the  pore  an'  needy  ones  'at  clusters  all  about, 
Er  the  gobble-uns  '11  git  you 

Ef  you 

Don't 

Watch 

Out!" 

Riley's  first  volume  has  been  followed  by  many  others  : 


212  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

"Neighborly  Poems,  "  Afterwhiles,"  "Pipes  O'Pan," 
"Bhymes  of  Childhood,"  etc.  In  1892  a  selection  of  his 
poems  was  published  in  England  with  the  title  "  Old- 
Fashioned  Boses."  Although  his  pieces  in  dialect  have 
winning  peculiarities,  all  their  own,  many  of  his  verses  in 
classical  English,  such  as  "  The  South  Wind  and  the  Sun  " 
and  "Afterwhiles,"  show  that  his  poetry  is  not  dependent 
upon  dialect  for  its  highest  effects. 

Charles  G.  Leland,  of  Philadelphia,  in  his  Hans  Breit- 
mann  ballads,  in  dialect,  gave  a  humorous  presentation  of 
the  German- American  element  in  the  cities.  By  the  death, 
in  1881,  of  Sidney  Lanier,  a  Georgian  by  birth,  the  South 
lost  a  poet  of  rare  promise,  whose  original  genius  was  some- 
what hampered  by  his  hesitation  between  two  arts  of  ex- 
pression, music  and  verse,  and  by  his  effort  to  coordinate 
them.  His  "Science  of  English  Verse,"  1880,  was  a  most 
suggestive,  though  hardly  convincing,  statement  of  that 
theory  of  their  relation  which  he  was  working  out  in  his 
practice.  Some  of  his  pieces,  like  "The  Mocking  Bird" 
and  the  "  Song  of  the  Chattahoochie,"  are  the  most  charac- 
teristically southern  poetry  that  has  been  written  in 
America.  Joel  Chandler  Harris's  "  Uncle  Bern  us  "  stories, 
in  negro  dialect,  are  transcripts  from  the  folk-lore  of  the 
plantation,  while  his  collection  of  stories,  "At  Teague 
Poteet's,"  together  with  Miss  Murfree's  "  In  the  Tennessee 
Mountains"  and  her  other  books,  have  made  the  northern 
public  familiar  with  the  wild  life  of  the  "  moonshiners," 
who  distil  illicit  whisky  in  the  mountains  of  Georgia, 
North  Carolina,  and  Tennessee.  These  tales  are  not  only 
exciting  in  incident,  but  strong  and  fresh  in  their  delinea- 
tions of  character.  Their  descriptions  of  mountain  scenery 
are  also  impressive,  though,  in  the  case  of  the  last-named 
writer,  frequently  too  prolonged. 

George  W.  Cable's  sketches  of  French  Creole  life  in  New 


Literature  Since  1861.  213 

Orleans  attracted  attention  by  their  freshness  and  quaintness 
when  published  in  the  magazines  and  reissued  in  book  form 
as  "Old  Creole  Days,"  in  1879.  His  first  regular  novel, 
"The  Grandissimes,"  1880,  was  likewise  a  story  of  Creole 
life.  It  had  the  same  winning  qualities  as  his  short  stories 
and  sketches,  but  was  an  advance  upon  them  in  dramatic 
force,  especially  in  the  intensely  tragic  and  powerfully  told 
episode  of  "  Bras  Coupe"."  Mr.  Cable  has  continued  his 
studies  of  Louisiana  types  and  ways  in  his  later  books,  but 
"  The  Grandissimes  "  still  remains  his  masterpiece.  All  in 
all,  he  is,  thus  far,  the  most  important  literary  figure  of  the 
New  South,  and  the  justness  and  delicacy  of  his  representa- 
tions of  life  speak  volumes  for  the  sobering  and  refining 
agency  of  the  Civil  War  in  the  states  whose  "  cause  "  was 
"lost,"  but  whose  true  interests  gained  even  more  by  the 
loss  than  did  the  interests  of  the  victorious  North. 

The  four  writers  last  mentioned  have  all  come  to  the  front 
within  the  past  fifteen  years,  and,  in  accordance  with  the 
plan  of  this  sketch,  receive  here  a  mere  passing  notice.  It 
remains  to  close  our  review  of  the  literary  history  of  the 
period  since  the  war  with  a  somewhat  more  extended  ac- 
count of  the  two  favorite  novelists  whose  work  has  done 
more  than  anything  else  to  shape  the  movement  of  recent 
fiction.  These  are  Henry  James,  Jr.,  and  William  Dean 
Howells.  Their  writings,  though  dissimilar  in  some  re- 
spects, are  alike  in  this,  that  they  are  analytic  in  method 
and  realistic  in  spirit.  Cooper  was  a  romancer  pure  and 
simple  ;  he  wrote  the  romance  of  adventure  and  of  external 
incident.  Hawthorne  went  much  deeper,  and  with  a  finer 
spiritual  insight  dealt  with  the  real  passions  of  the  heart 
and  with  men's  inner  experiences.  This  he  did  with  truth 
and  power ;  but,  although  himself  a  keen  observer  of  what- 
ever passed  before  his  eyes,  he  was  not  careful  to  secure  a 
photographic  fidelity  to  the  surface  facts  of  speech,  dress, 


214  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

and  manners.  Thus  the  talk  of  his  characters  is  book-talkt 
and  not  the  actual  language  of  the  parlor  or  the  street,  with 
its  slang,  its  colloquial  ease  and  the  intonations  and  shad- 
ings  of  phrase  and  pronunciation  which  mark  different 
sections  of  the  country  and  different  grades  of  society.  His 
attempts  at  dialect,  for  example,  were  of  the  slenderest  kind. 
His  art  is  ideal,  and  his  romances  certainly  do  not  rank  as 
novels  of  real  life.  But  with  the  growth  of  a  richer  and 
more  complicated  society  in  America,  fiction  has  grown 
more  social  and  more  minute  in  its  observation. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  classify  the  novels  of  James  and 
Howells  as  the  fiction  of  manners  merely ;  they  are  also  the 
fiction  of  character,  but  they  aim  to  describe  people  not 
only  as  they  are,  in  their  inmost  natures,  but  also  as  they 
look  and  talk  and  dress.  They  try  to  express  character 
through  manners,  which  is  the  way  in  which  it  is  most 
often  expressed  in  the  daily  existence  of  a  conventional  so- 
ciety. It  is  a  principle  of  realism  not  to  select  exceptional 
persons  or  occurrences,  but  to  take  average  men  and  women 
and  their  average  experiences.  The  realists  protest  that  the 
moving  incident  is  not  their  trade,  and  that  the  stories  have 
all  been  told.  They  want  no  plot  and  no  hero.  They  will 
tell  no  rounded  tale  with  a  denouement,  in  which  all  the 
parts  are  distributed,  as  in  the  fifth  act  of  an  old-fashioned 
comedy  ;  but  they  will  take  a  transcript  from  life  and  end 
when  they  get  through,  without  informing  the  reader  what 
becomes  of  the  characters.  And  they  will  try  to  interest 
this  reader  in  "poor  real  life"  with  its  "foolish  face." 
Their  acknowledged  masters  are  Balzac,  George  Eliot,  Tur- 
gSnieff,  and  Anthony  Trollope,  and  they  regard  novels  as 
studies  in  sociology,  honest  reports  of  the  writers'  impres- 
sions, which  may  not  be  without  a  certain  scientific  value 
even. 

Mr.  James's  peculiar  province  is  the  international  novel, 


Literature  Since  1861.  215 

a  field  which  he  created  for  himself,  but  which  he  has  occu- 
pied in  company  with  Howells,  Mrs.  Burnett,  and  many 
others.  The  novelist  received  most  of  his  schooling  in 
Europe,  and  has  lived  much  abroad,  with  the  result  that  he 
has  become  half  denationalized  and  has  engrafted  a  cosmo- 
politan indifference  upon  his  Yankee  inheritance.  This, 
indeed,  has  constituted  his  opportunity.  A  close  observer 
and  a  conscientious  student  of  the  literary  art,  he  has  added 
to  his  intellectual  equipment  the  advantage  of  a  curious 
doubleness  in  his  point  of  view.  He  looks  at  America  with 
the  eyes  of  a  foreigner  and  at  Europe  with  the  eyes  of  an 
American.  He  has  so  far  thrown  himself  out  of  relation 
with  American  life  that  he  described  a  Boston  horse-car  or 
a  New  York  hotel  table  with  a  sort  of  amused  wonder.  His 
starting-point  was  in  criticism,  and  he  has  always  main- 
tained the  critical  attitude.  He  took  up  story-writing  in 
order  to  help  himself,  by  practical  experiment,  in  his  chosen 
art  of  literary  criticism,  and  his  volume  on  "French  Poets 
and  Novelists,"  1878,  is  by  no  means  the  least  valuable  of  his 
books.  His  short  stories  in  the  magazines  were  collected  in- 
to a  volume  in  1875,  with  the  title,  "A  Passionate  Pilgrim, 
and  Other  Stories."  One  or  two  of  these,  as  "The  Last  of 
theValerii"  and  "The  Madonna  of  the  Future,"  suggest 
Hawthorne,  a  very  unsympathetic  study  of  whom  James 
afterward  contributed  to  the  "English  Men  of  Letters" 
series.  But  in  the  name-story  of  the  collection  he  was  al- 
ready in  the  line  of  his  future  development.  This  is  the 
story  of  a  middle-aged  invalid  American  who  comes  to  Eng- 
land in  search  of  health,  and  finds,  too  late,  in  the  mellow 
atmosphere  of  the  mother-country,  the  repose  and  the  con- 
genial surroundings  which  he  has  all  his  life  been  longing 
for  in  his  raw  America.  The  pathos  of  his  self-analysis  and 
his  confession  of  failure  is  subtly  imagined.  The  impres- 
sions which  he  and  his  far-away  English  kinsfolk  make  on 


216  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

one  another,  their  mutual  attraction  and  repulsion,  are  de- 
scribed with  that  delicate  perception  of  national  differences 
which  makes  the  humor  and  sometimes  the  tragedy  of 
James's  later  books,  like  "The  American,"  "Daisy  Mil- 
ler," "  The  Europeans,"  and  "An  International  Episode." 
His  first  novel  was  "Roderick  Hudson,"  1876,  not  the 
most  characteristic  of  his  fictions,  but  perhaps  the  most 
powerful  in  its  grasp  of  elementary  passion.  The  analytic 
method  and  the  critical  attitude  have  their  dangers  in  im- 
aginative literature.  In  proportion  as  this  writer's  faculty 
of  minute  observation  and  his  realistic  objectivity  have  in- 
creased upon  him,  the  uncomfortable  coldness  which  is  felt 
in  his  youthful  work  has  become  actually  disagreeable,  and 
his  art — growing  constantly  finer  and  surer  in  matters  of 
detail — has  seemed  to  dwell  more  and  more  in  the  region  of 
mere  manners  and  less  in  the  higher  realm  of  character  and 
passion.  In  most  of  his  writings  the  heart,  somehow,  is 
left  out.  We  have  seen  that  Irving,  from  his  knowledge  of 
England  and  America,  and  his  long  residence  in  both  coun- 
tries, became  the  mediator  between  the  two  great  branches 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  This  he  did  by  the  power  of  his 
sympathy  with  each.  Henry  James  has  likewise  inter- 
preted the  two  nations  to  one  another  in  a  subtler  but  less 
genial  fashion  than  Irving,  and  not  through  sympathy,  but 
through  contrast,  by  bringing  into  relief  the  opposing  ideals 
of  life  and  society  which  have  developed  under  different  in- 
stitutions. In  his  novel,  "The  American,"  1877,  he  has 
shown  the  actual  misery  which  may  result  from  the  clash- 
ing of  opposed  social  systems.  In  such  clever  sketches  as 
"Daisy  Miller,"  1879,  "  The  Pension  Beaurepas,"  and  "A 
Bundle  of  Letters,"  he  has  exhibited  types  of  the  American 
girl,  the  American  business  man,  the  aesthetic  feebling  from 
Boston,  and  the  Europeanized  or  would-be  denationalized 
American  campaigners  in  the  Old  World,  and  has  set  forth 


Literature  Since  1861.  217 


the  ludicrous  incongruities,  perplexities,  and  misunder- 
standings which  result  from  contradictory  standards  of  con- 
ventional morality  and  behavior.  In  "The  Europeans," 
1879,  "  Lady  Barbarina,"  and  "An.  International  Episode," 
1888,  he  has  reversed  the  process,  bringing  Old  World  stand- 
ards to  the  test  of  American  ideas  by  transferring  his  dram- 
atis personce  to  republican  soil.  The  last  named  of  these  il- 
lustrates how  slender  a  plot  realism  requires  for  its  purposes. 
It  is  nothing  more  than  the  history  of  an  English  girl  of 
good  family  who  marries  an  American  gentleman  and  un- 
dertakes to  live  in  America,  but  finds  herself  so  uncomfort- 
able in  strange  social  conditions  that  she  returns  to  Eng- 
land for  life,  while,  contrariwise,  the  heroine's  sister  is  so 
taken  with  the  freedom  of  these  very  conditions  that  she 
elopes  with  another  American  and  "  goes  West."  James  is 
a  keen  observer  of  the  physiognomy  of  cities  as  well  as  of 
men,  and  his  "Portraits  of  Places,"  1884,  is  among  the 
most  delightful  contributions  to  the  literature  of  foreign 
travel. 

Mr.  Howells's  writings  are  not  without  "international" 
touches.  In  "A  Foregone  Conclusion"  and  "  The  Lady  of 
the  Aroostook,"  and  others  of  his  novels,  the  contrasted 
points  of  view  in  American  and  European  life  are  intro- 
duced, and  especially  those  variations  in  feeling,  custom, 
and  dialect,  which  make  the  modern  Englishman  and 
the  modern  American  such  objects  of  curiosity  to  each 
other,  and  which  have  been  dwelt  upon  of  late  even  unto 
satiety.  But  in  general  he  finds  his  subjects  at  home,  and 
if  he  does  not  know  his  own  countrymen  and  country- 
women more  intimately  than  Mr.  James,  at  least  he  loves 
them  better.  There  is  a  warmer  sentiment  in  his  fictions, 
too ;  his  men  are  better  fellows  and  his  women  are  more 
lovable.  Howells  was  born  in  Ohio.  His  early  life  was 
that  of  a  western  country  editor.  In  1860  he  published, 


218  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

jointly  with  his  friend  Piatt,  a  book  of  verse — "  Poems  of 
Two  Friends."  In  1861  he  was  sent  as  consul  to  Venice, 
and  the  literary  results  of  his  sojourn  there  appeared  in  his 
sketches,  "Venetian  Life,"  1865,  and  "Italian  Journeys," 
1867.  In  1871  he  became  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
and  in  the  same  year  published  his  "  Suburban  Sketches." 
All  of  these  early  volumes  showed  a  quick  eye  for  the  pic- 
turesque, an  unusual  power  of  description,  and  humor  of 
the  most  delicate  quality  ;  but  as  yet  there  was  little  ap- 
proach to  narrative.  "Their  Wedding  Journey"  was  a 
revelation  to  the  public  of  the  interest  that  may  lie  in  an 
ordinary  bridal  trip  across  the  state  of  New  York,  when  a 
close  and  sympathetic  observation  is  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  characteristics  of  American  life  as  it  appears  at  railway 
stations  and  hotels,  on  steamboats  and  in  the  streets  of  very 
commonplace  towns.  "A  Chance  Acquaintance,"  1873,  was 
Howells's  first  novel,  though  even  yet  the  story  was  set 
against  a  background  of  travel-pictures.  A  holiday  trip 
on  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Saguenay,  with  descriptions 
of  Quebec  and  the  Falls  of  Montmorenci,  rather  predomi- 
nated over  the  narrative.  Thus,  gradually  and  by  a  natural 
process,  complete  characters  and  realistic  novels,  such  as 
"A  Modern  Instance,"  1882,  and  "Indian  Summer," 
evolved  themselves  from  truthful  sketches  of  places  and 
persons  seen  by  the  way. 

The  incompatibility  existing  between  European  and 
American  views  of  life,  which  makes  the  comedy  or  the 
tragedy  of  Henry  James's  international  fictions,  is  replaced 
in  Howells's  novels  by  the  repulsion  between  differing 
social  grades  in  the  same  country.  The  adjustment  of  these 
subtle  distinctions  forms  a  part  of  the  problem  of  life  in  all 
complicated  societies.  Thus  in  "A  Chance  Acquaintance" 
the  heroine  is  a  bright  and  pretty  western  girl,  who  be- 
comes engaged  during  a  pleasure  tour  to  an  irreproachable 


Literature  Since  1861.  219 

but  offensively  priggish  young  gentleman  from  Boston,  and 
the  engagement  is  broken  by  her  in  consequence  of  an  un- 
intended slight — the  betrayal  on  the  hero's  part  of  a  shade 
of  mortification  when  he  and  his  betrothed  are  suddenly 
brought  into  the  presence  of  some  fashionable  ladies  belong- 
ing to  his  own  monde.  The  little  comedy,  "  Out  of  the 
Question,"  deals  with  this  same  adjustment  of  social 
scales ;  and  in  many  of  Howells's  other  novels,  such  as 
"Silas  Lapham"  and  "The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,"  one 
of  the  main  motives  may  be  described  to  be  the  contact  of 
the  man  who  eats  with  his  fork  with  the  man  who  eats 
with  his  knife,  and  the  shock  thereby  ensuing.  In  "  Indian 
Summer"  the  complications  arise  from  the  difference  in 
age  between  the  hero  and  heroine,  and  not  from  a  differ- 
ence in  station  or  social  antecedents.  In  all  of  these  fic- 
tions the  misunderstandings  come  from  an  incompatibility 
of  manners  rather  than  of  character,  and,  if  anything 
were  to  be  objected  to  the  probability  of  the  story,  it  is  that 
the  climax  hinges  on  delicacies  and  subtleties  which,  in 
real  life,  when  there  is  opportunity  for  explanations,  are 
readily  brushed  aside.  But  in  "A  Modern  Instance" 
Howells  touched  the  deeper  springs  of  action.  In  this,  his 
strongest  work,  the  catastrophe  is  brought  about,  as  in 
George  Eliot's  great  novels,  by  the  reaction  of  characters 
upon  one  another,  and  the  story  is  realistic  in  a  higher 
sense  than  any  mere  study  of  manners  can  be. 

His  nearest  approach  to  romance  is  in  "  The  Undiscovered 
Country,"  1880,  which  deals  with  the  Spiritualists  and  the 
Shakers,  and  in  its  study  of  problems  that  hover  on  the 
borders  of  the  supernatural,  in  its  out-of-the-way  personages 
and  adventures,  and  in  a  certain  ideal  poetic  flavor  about  the 
whole  book,  has  a  strong  resemblance  to  Hawthorne,  es- 
pecially to  Hawthorne  in  "The  Blithedale  Eomance," 
where  he  comes  closer  to  common  ground  with  other  ro- 


220  Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 

mancers.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  "  The  Undiscovered 
Country"  with  Henry  James's  "Bostonians,"  the  latest 
and  one  of  the  cleverest  of  his  fictions,  which  is  likewise  a 
study  of  the  clairvoyants,  mediums,  woman's  rights  advo- 
cates, and  all  varieties  of  cranks,  reformers,  and  patrons  of 
"causes,"  for  whom  Boston  has  long  been  notorious.  A 
most  unlovely  race  of  people  they  become  under  the  cold 
scrutiny  of  Mr.  James's  cosmopolitan  eyes,  which  see  more 
clearly  the  charlatanism,  narrow-mindedness,  mistaken 
fanaticism,  morbid  self-consciousness,  disagreeable  nervous 
intensity,  and  vulgar  or  ridiculous  outside  peculiarities  of 
the  humanitarians,  than  the  nobility  and  moral  enthusiasm 
which  underlie  the  surface. 

Howells  is  almost  the  only  successful  American  dramatist 
whose  plays  are  also  literature.  His  field  is  parlor  comedy. 
His  little  farces,  "The  Elevator,"  "The  Register,"  "The 
Parlor-Car,"  have  a  lightness  and  grace,  with  an  exqui- 
sitely absurd  situation,  which  remind  us  more  of  the 
"Comedies  et  Proverbes  "  of  Alfred  de  Musset,  or  the  many 
agreeable  dialogues  and  monologues  of  the  French  domestic 
stage,  than  of  any  work  of  English  or  American  hands.  His 
softly  ironical  yet  affectionate  treatment  of  feminine  ways 
is  especially  admirable.  In  his  numerous  types  of  sweetly 
illogical,  inconsistent,  and  inconsequent  womanhood  he  has 
perpetuated  with  a  nicer  art  than  Dickens  what  Thackeray 
calls  "that  great  discovery,"  Mrs.  Nickleby. 


1.  THEODORE  WINTHBOP  :    "Life  in   the  Open  Air"; 
"  Cecil  Dreeme." 

2.  THOMAS  WENTWOBTH  HIGGINSON  :  "  Life  in  a  Black 
Regiment." 

3.  "  Poetry  of  the  Civil  War."     Edited  by  Richard  Grant 
White.    New  York  :  1866. 

4.  CHARLES  FARRAR  BROWNE:  "  Artemus  Ward— His 


Literature  Since  1861.  221 

Book  "  ;  "  Lecture  on  the  Mormons  "  ;  "  Artemus  Ward  in 
London." 

5.  SAMUEL    LANGHOBNE    CLEMENS  :     "  The    Jumping 
Frog  "  ;  "  Roughing  It"  ;  "  The  Mississippi  Pilot." 

6.  CHARLES   GODFREY  LELAND  :    "Hans  Breitmann's 
Ballads." 

7.  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  :  "If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps  "  ; 
"  His  Level  Best,  and  Other  Stories." 

8.  FRANCIS  BRET  HARTE  :  "  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  and 
Other  Stories";  "Condensed  Novels";  "Poems  in  Dia- 
lect." 

9.  SIDNEY  LANIER  :  "  Nirvana  "  ;  "  Resurrection  ";  "The 
Harlequin  of  Dreams";   "Song  of  the  Chattahoochie "  ; 
"The   Mocking    Bird";    "  The  Stirrup-Cup ";    "Tampa 
Robins";    "The    Bee";     "The  Revenge   of   Hamish "  ; 
"  The  Ship  of  Earth  "  ;  "  The  Marshes  of  Glynn  "  ;  "  Sun- 
rise." 

10.  HENRY  JAMES,  JR.  :  "A  Passionate  Pilgrim  "  ;  "  Rod- 
erick Hudson  "  ;  "  Daisy  Miller  "  ;  "  Pension  Beaurepas  "  ; 
"A  Bundle  of  Letters  "  ;    "An  International   Episode  "  ; 
"  The  Bostonians  "  ;  "  Portraits  of  Places." 

11.  WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS  :  "Their  Wedding  Jour- 
ney "  ;  "  Suburban  Sketches  "  ;  "  A  Chance  Acquaintance  "; 
"  A  Foregone  Conclusion  "  ;  "  The  Undiscovered  Country"; 
"A  Modern  Instance." 

12.  GEORGE  W.  CABLE  :  "Old  Creole  Days  "  ;  "  Madame 
Delphine";  "  The  Grandissimes." 

13.  JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS  :  "  Uncle  Remus  ";  "  Min- 
go,  and  Other  Sketches." 

14.  CH ARLES  EGBERT  CRADDOCK  (Miss  M URFREE)  :  "In 

the  Tennessee  Mountains." 

15.  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY  :  "  Neighborly  Poems  "  ; 
"Afterwhiles  "  ;  "  Rhymes  of  Childhood." 


Date  Due 


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963 

JAN  18 

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1963 

JUL    1 

2  1963 

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OCT22 

1972 

MOV  2 

1  1972  7 

VRY  FACILITY 


3     8 


Library  Bureau  Cat.  No.  1137 


3  121001837  1599 


